In Sandy\'s Wake, Hard-Earned Advice From Asia: Pull Together

HONG KONG - Readers from around the world, and especially those in Asia, have responded graciously to our Facebook call seeking advice for storm-affected Americans, as folks along the Eastern Seaboard try to recover from the lashings of Hurricane Sandy this week.

“Be prepared!” said Redgz Tapalla-Molidor of the Philippines. “Listen to warnings given by weather forecasters. We've been hit by a lot of strong tropical storms, our secret in coping up is bayanihan.”

Bayanihan is a term used by Filipinos to describe a communal spirit, a coming-together to overcome a crisis or to reach a common goal. To get through the flooding of Manila in August, as we wrote on Rendezvous, “on social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, and through text messages, Filipinos demonstrated a remarkable civic spirit as they shared news of evacuation centers and dropoff points for donations of emergency supplies.”

As Ms. Tapalla-Molidor says:

Rich or poor, famous or not, people help each other. We donate, lend equipment, and extend a helping hand. We lose our hard-earned possessions but we are still alive and our families, that's faith. Victims also undergo counseling especially the kids. They were given school supplies and toys so they can move on with their studies and be productive. Hope this helps.

Asia, of necessity, knows its way around natural disasters. Typhoon season is an annual worry for Pacific Islanders and those in coastal areas of Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand. The Philippines sits in the middle of what might be called Typhoon Alley, and Filipinos are regularly tormented by tropical superstorms, floods and mudslides. The storms in August overwhelmed Manila, killing at least 11 people and leaving a quarter-million homeless.

Eva Cakau from Fiji offered this advice:

Adopt a “Get back to normal as quick as possible” mentality and start the c leanup. My little town never waited for handouts or help from authorities when we were hit by massive floodings due to a cyclone. We just got up and did the best we could. When the authorities did finally reach us like one month later, everything was up and running again. We went without water and power supply for 10 days….and managed to pump water from a creek to clean up the mess.

Diesel generators, water blasters, canned foods and lots of batteries for torches were our biggest help! But mental toughness got us thru!

Many countries in the Asia-Pacific region are vulnerable to Ring of Fire earthquakes and their follow-on effects, including the massive Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and the earthquake-tsunami disaster in March 2011 that killed an estimated 18,000 Japanese, crushed Japan's northeastern coast and crippled the Fukushima nuclear complex. Christchurch, New Zealand, was badly damaged just before Christmas last year, and Indonesia and China routinely tremble from quakes.

Jules Mauri Venning of Timaru, New Zealand, says he “came through quakes by communicating with family, friends, setting limits to work commitments, pacing self and giving myself time out as necessary, also set a strategy for what would be achieved.”

And Denise O'Toole writes:

I lived in Chengdu, China when the Wenchuan earthquake struck Sichuan Province in 2008 and killed 88,000. People relied on each other, friends and strangers alike, in unprecedented ways that truly surprised the Chinese people. Recognizing our shared humanity, offering kindnesses large and small, and accepting help when offered got people through very dark times. . . and had a lasting impact on how people saw themselves and others.

Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008 killed more than 130,000 people flattened almost everything in the southern rice-growing delta. The brutal military junta at the time was monstrously inept i n relief efforts, even refusing aid shipments waiting just offshore in U.S. Navy ships. The regime's dithering and the people's anguish had a politically cyclonic effect on one senior general: U Thein Sein is now the president of the country and leading a new wave of democratic reforms there.

There also was a glimmer of a political breakthrough in the storm region in the United States this week, as Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, made a tour of battered areas with Barack Obama, the Democratic president. In one interview, Mr. Christie said that “the president has been all over this and deserves great credit.”

“I hope the American people can transfer this disaster to an occasion for solidarity and brotherhood between all the classes of society and every religions and races,” Farous Tounsi wrote to us.

And Anne Murphy of Queens Village, New York, said of our Facebook comments that it “sounds like most people across the world of fer the same thoughts as those in this country who have gone through devastation.”

“I think we are blessed that we haven't seen natural disasters with the loss of life scale seen by some of the people in this discussion,” Ms. Murphy said. “God bless us all in times like these. Attitude and each other make a big difference.”