(Eagle News) — President Rodrigo Duterte said “we were ignorant” when typhoon Yolanda hit in November 2013.
Duterte made the statement during the launch of the first-ever humanitarian mission ship, MV Amazing Grace.
“I was really appalled that despite the fact that the warning came to us early, (that there was the) most powerful typhoon so far in the century, many of our countrymen took it lightly,” he noted.
“We were ignorant when the typhoon hit,” Duterte, who was Davao mayor at that time, added.
He said when he looked at the Gulf of Leyte at that time, he “could not see even one boat in the water.”
“There was no ship at all. And when I looked down…the guy..said, ‘Sir, may tubig ba kayong dala diyan?’ Then it dawned on me that this was a crisis,” Duterte said.
“I cried”
He recalled how he walked toward the regional Philippine National Police headquarters at that time when he chanced upon a five-month-old baby “alone beside a dead dog.”
“I excused myself from the party…and said I had to pee. I cried, I couldn’t bear the sight,” he said.
“I looked to the heavens and said, ‘What happened?’ Something went wrong during Yolanda. Very very wrong,” he said.
Duterte refrained from pinning the blame on any one person, though, saying “it’s no longer time to do it.”
“No offense intended to anyone…Anyway, we have the ship…It’s a refreshing sight,” he said.
