With the Philippines experiencing about 20 typhoons a year and being prone to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, the government should have a preparedness plan in place to deal with natural disasters. Yet as the hundreds of deaths after volcanic mudslides caused by a super typhoon last week clearly show, whatever strategy the government has is ineffective.
This is despite President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and other officials time and again, after each tragedy, promising to take appropriate steps to prevent similar occurrences. But as before, the country has been struck by a disaster and been ill-prepared to deal with it.
Super Typhoon Durian hit the eastern coast of the main island of Luzon on Thursday, triggering mudslides on the slopes of the country's most active volcano, Mayon, which buried villages. When the scale of the tragedy became known, there was insufficient expertise and equipment available and a call went out for foreign help. Time was wasted and lives lost.
Unlike last year's earthquake in Pakistan and the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, this was not an unusual event. Each year, it is repeated to varying degrees of deadliness across the Philippines.
Mrs Arroyo made a pledge to prevent a similar disaster 10 months ago when more than 1,000 people died in Leyte province after being buried by a mudslide that was the result of heavy rain loosening soil made unstable by logging. The leader promised to do her utmost to prevent a repeat and urged Filipinos to 'link arms to preserve our environment and protect what remains of it for our next generation'. Little more than a year before, she made the same pledge after heavy rain in the province of Quezon, south of Manila, caused slides that again killed more than 1,000 people.
Both tragedies came despite a law drafted and enacted cracking down on unauthorised logging nationwide. Similarly, after a series of deadly landslides on an island adjacent to Leyte in 2003, officials launched a geo-hazard mapping project to identify and make dangerous slopes safe.
This is not to say that all the deaths on the slopes of Mayon could have been prevented. There has as yet been no investigation as to what exactly happened and whether official ineptitude is to blame.