Marcos on Typhoon Karding: We may have gotten lucky at this time

President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. on Monday expressed belief that the Philippines may have gotten "lucky" amid the onslaught of Typhoon Karding, saying that government agencies have planned and prepared for it.

The President also commended local government units for relaying to the residents what needs to be done during this time of disaster.

"I think, we may have gotten lucky at this time, a little bit. I think it's clear from what we did these last two days is that very very important is preparations, get people out of areas of danger, put all of your assets that you're going to use pagka mag-rescue, mag-relief, put them in place as much as possible," Marcos said in a situation briefing.

"Prepare all of the ano... it's really in the preparation and that's why we're able to... and then the LGUs did a good job na explaining the ano, what the situation was, what needs to be done... ano 'yung plano (what the plans are). So, I think this is good illustration of how that can really help," he added.

"That's the approach that we will take always. That's why we need good weather forecast from PAGASA to give us much time as possible to prepare," Marcos said.

According to Marcos, there is no such thing as "overkill" when it comes to disaster preparations as it is better to excessively prepare for its effects.

"The preparation that we did all day yesterday, just making sure that everything was pre-positioned, we had a plan for whatever would happen. You might think that we overdid it, there's no such thing as overkill when it comes to disasters, so tama ito, we put everything in place. Mabuti na 'yung sobra kaysa kulang (It's better to prepare in excess.)," Marcos said.

He added that the government would only "stand down" from addressing the situation when "the majority of the evacuees are already back home."

Meanwhile, in the same briefing, Marcos raised that the recent typhoons have been developing rapidly, noting that this was not the case before.

"Is that going to be a tendency? The typhoons develop so rapidly. Odette developed over 24 hours. It was not a super typhoon, then boom it was," said Marcos.

"This one the same. We went from Signal No. 2 to Signal No. 5 in a period of like three hours, four hours. Is that going to be ano --- ? Is that a trend? Iyan na ‘yung climate change? (Is this the climate change?)" he added.

"Matagal na tayong nagbabantay ng bagyo, hindi ganyan (We've been monitoring typhoons before, it's not like this). Oh well, that’s something we’ll have to deal with," Marcos said.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said 643 people or 164 families were affected by Karding in 28 barangays in Cagayan, Mimaropa, Bicol, Western Visayas, and Cordillera.

A total of 590 individuals or 147 families were staying in 34 evacuation centers, while 53 people or 13 families were staying outside evacuation centers, it added.

Five rescuers died in a flash flood in Barangay Camias in San Miguel, Bulacan following the onslaught of Karding on Sunday evening, according to a police incident report.

The report from the Central Luzon regional police identified the fatalities as Narciso Calayag, Jerson Resurecion, Marvy Bartolome, George Agustin and Troy Justin Agusin. — RSJ, GMA News