Calamities and Disaster Preparedness Seminar: A Reaction Paper

Calamities and Disaster Preparedness Seminar

A Reaction Paper

Last September 24, 2014 I attended an event in connection with the CSSP Security Awareness Week entitled: “Calamities and Disaster Preparedness Seminar”. At first, I thought that it was just the usual seminar by which I attend almost every year when I was in high school but in reality it was much more than that. Being a boy from a province which by the way would never experience calamities as tremendous as those experienced by Luzon provinces, I realized a lot of things. From the moment the seminar started; when the speaker presented a slide show of pictures from different calamities all over the Philippines, I started to grasp the importance of being aware now that I am in a more calamity prone area. Before I entered college and when I was still in the province, I always thought that I was safe therefore; I never took into heart the things that I have learned in the previous seminars that I have attended but this one though served as a reality check for me. It also helped to apprehend the idea of how thankful I am for not being able to experience firsthand, calamities as extreme as the ones being presented. Another thought that came to mind during the seminar was that Mother Nature is not the only one to blame for these calamities, but we humans as well for without the negative effects of certain human – nature interactions, natural hazards wouldn’t branch out to disasters as severe as the ones happening at present.

The seminar certainly served as an eye – opener for me for after the event, I did not only become aware of what to do before, during, and after a certain calamity but I also became aware of what the Philippines’ state is today in terms of being a calamity prone country.