Five minutes more

‘’A hero,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.” Surely those crucial five minutes are also the distinguishing mark in the recent lives of so many of the victims and survivors of Tropical Storm “Sendong” in Mindanao who have borne this unprecedented tragedy in their midst, not only with fortitude and faith, but also, in the face of their own personal devastation, the urge to reach out and still be of help to others in greater need. Men like the members of the Cagayan de Oro City police force, who, while grieving over the loss of two of their comrades and with their own homes and families also affected by the calamity, have continued to search for victims, rescue survivors and conduct relief and retrieval operations in the affected areas. A colleague of theirs had earlier drowned while crossing a swollen river in pursuit of members of a holdup-robbery gang. Another one got caught in raging floodwaters while on a rescue operation at the height of the typhoon. Still, the policemen have not let up, even on Christmas Day—daring to go where the stench and devastation have intimidated others.

Philippine National Police Director General Nicanor Bartolome said their operations will continue until a semblance of normality has returned to Northern Mindanao. “This should not dampen the spirit of our policemen,” Bartolome said. “This is a reality in the police service where our lives are always at risk particularly in situations like this.” Our hats off to them.

Among civilians and ordinary folk, the list of those who have notched their own extra five minutes of unexpected heroism grows by the day. A heartbreaking example involves sisters Naomi Felicilda and Sarah Benegildo. When the floodwaters engulfed their house in the dead of night, they turned up a wooden bed, hoisted their elderly mother Herminia on it, and propped it up at both ends, even as the water was rising around them by the minute. Six hours later, Herminia managed to climb down with the help of passing neighbors, and found her two daughters dead. They had drowned while holding on to the bed to keep it upright for their mother.

Public school teachers, themselves mourning the loss of loved ones and homes, still found the strength to volunteer to prepare meals in the evacuation centers for the thousands rendered homeless by the floods. “Without any prompting from us, the teachers were the ones cooking food for evacuees,” reported Education Secretary Armin Luistro, after he visited Cagayan de Oro and Iligan in the wake of the disaster. “They scrounged around and drew from their own pockets to help feed the evacuees even before help came from outside.”

That selfless, caring impulse also characterizes widow Lucy Bado’s actions during the deluge, when she opened her two-story, four-bedroom concrete house to serve as shelter to some 100 people from the neighborhood, mostly children, and even some pets and animals. When the house threatened to give way to the rampaging waters, Bado ordered everyone to evacuate to a nearby sturdier house owned by a niece working in Bahrain. Through a window in Bado’s own bedroom, the evacuees transferred by rope to the other house via a hole in its ceiling. Bado and her two children were the last to move out. She also ordered that the roof over half of her niece’s house be destroyed, because “I was thinking that in the event the house is carried by the waters, we can still escape through the opening.” Mercifully, the second structure held, but Bado’s own house, within minutes of the evacuation, was swept out to sea. Some 120 houses in the area were also wiped out. None of those who took shelter with Bado lost their lives, though. Her beneficence, quick thinking and unselfishness to save material possessions in the face of universal distress saved the day for everyone.

Thousands of organizations and individuals in the country and abroad are now doing their share to help alleviate the suffering in Mindanao. Without knocking down such instantaneous generosity, let us be clear that the true paragons in this tragedy are the ordinary, often nameless men and women who have given not from their excess or what they could spare, but out of, and despite, their own want. Of this rarefied band that represents the best and most heroic in our humanity, those on the ground in Mindanao—those who battle their own haplessness to continue to help others—define for the rest of us what it means to be brave for a precious five minutes more.