With or without disaster, Guam is ever ready

From the Publisher's Desk By Mar-Vic Cagurangan

At the height of tensions between the U.S. and North Korea in 2017, Donald Trump gave Pyongyang a “fire and fury” warning. Kim Jong-un verbally retaliated with a threat to create an “enveloping fire” around Guam with medium- to long-range ballistic missiles.

For Guam residents, it was more of an intense entertainment than anything to be worried about. Life went on. No one was stacking up on supplies. No one was packing up to leave the island.

Foreign journalists covering the theatrics were puzzled by Guam residents’ almost stoic disposition in the face of the geopolitical commotion. “This is part of our life—the missile threats. We’ve heard this many times,” I told one of them.

Perhaps the downside to being desensitized by dud threats is that we don’t know when the danger is real.

But Guam is not a stranger to calamities. The “great generation” survived WWII. We always manage to pull through typhoons.

Year in and year out, we get disaster warnings. Sometimes nature’s wrath spares us. We get lucky. But vigilance and preparedness are part of the routine that we have learned to fine-tune after each impromptu disaster drill.

The July 30 tsunami advisory was yet another on-the-spot emergency rehearsal. No one panicked. In the face of any looming disaster, we always know what to do and where to go for safety.

We navigate any situation with humor. "Like typhoon time — I'm waiting for BBQ and Spam to come out," former Sen. Sam Mabini said in jest.

But we live in strange times. Natural disasters are not the only menace we are facing. Global tensions are escalating. We may shrug off “the boy who cried wolf, but it’s only a matter of time.

The Department of Defense’s Guam missile defense system will take 10 years to complete. Meanwhile, serious community fortification on Guam is not on the menu. Taiwan and Japan have established shelter infrastructure and evacuation plans. This is what Guam currently lacks.

“In lieu of traditional bomb shelters, our strategic approach on Guam is to leverage the robust network of concrete structures that dot our island,” Esther Aguigui, the governor's special assistant for homeland security, said in an earlier interview. “While designated bomb shelters may not exist, we stand fortified by the majority of our concrete buildings.”

All we have to do is watch world news to see how concrete buildings get smashed by missile attacks.

"In this dynamic landscape, resilience is our armor and vigilance our watchword," Aguigui said.

It's nice to wax poetic about our qualities, but we still need to talk about building bomb shelters. 

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