BY JULLIE Y. DAZA
WHEN super typhoon Rolly came bearing down and made landfall in several provinces last Sunday, Metro Manila was warned to expect signal-4 winds and rain, next only to the highest category of 5.
The warning was issued just in time, alerting optimists, pessimists, and agnostics to get down on their knees and pray. Remembering the havoc wrought by Ondoy and Yolanda of recent memory, they hoped and wished and tried to will the typhoon away, with all their might. The typhoon blew out to sea, though without sparing the Bicol region, Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and Quezon.
“I am a scientist,” said a PAGASA meteorologist, “but I believe in God and in the power of prayer.” She recounted how Rolly veered away from the path being tracked by the weather bureau and saved Metro Manila, with its flood-prone streets and swollen creeks and rivers, from monumental damage to infrastructures and congested neighborhoods. The weather maps displayed on TV validated the observation – Rolly moved a tick higher away from the megacity and closer to Bulacan on its exit.
In a short interview on radio, the meteorologist said she invoked the Oratio Imperata to forestall an impending disaster. With science’s tools at her command, one assumes she must have estimated the scale of destruction that would befall the city if the super typhoon were to score a direct hit. Oratio Imperata is an emergency prayer prayed by a group for a specific purpose, the current one being for God’s mercy to protect His people from the coronavirus pandemic, if not to end it. Two summers ago, an Oratio was offered for God to send us rain.
The meteorologist was not alone in attributing Rolly’s change of direction to prayer. Arleen Fernandez, as Christian as she is a maternal type, said, “Everyone prayed because everyone was scared of a signal-4 typhoon. Our prayers were heard, thank God.” Told that the forecaster was of the same view, she said, “Let’s ask God to tame our typhoons.”
Pray for everyone to be safe, whatever the season. Extreme climate changes have not changed the fact that typhoon casualties happen outdoors mostly – drowning in a creek or flash flood, struck by trees and flying debris, fishing or boating in rough waters.
