Francisco Colayco couldn't have said it better. One of the many lessons learned the hard way via the Ondoy experience, is the importance of insurance--property, chattel, travel, life, health (like the Blue Advantage) and so on and so forth. Here's an excerpt of his article:
Ondoy’s devastation should remind us to take a second look at the importance of insurance. Those who have family dependent on them should taking life insurance to somehow lessen the pain of their loss. Term insurance does not cost very much. Another is property insurance, specifically for our home, its contents and our cars.
For house insurance, the most common perils that you should cover are fire, typhoon, and earthquake.
Fire, in particular, can render one completely devastated because, most of the time, you can lose almost everything permanently including your memories (pictures and mementos). But the floods of Ondoy reminded us that floods can be just as devastating as fire. If you had insurance against typhoon, the losses you incurred with the floods would have been covered.
Whether or not you own your house, you can consider covering it with insurance. As always, you do not want to claim on insurance and it is difficult to spend on premium payments because you might feel that you are throwing away money for nothing. After all, you do not get any part of your premium payment back. These premium payments are one hundred percent expenses. However, if you can afford it, it is better to be protected.
If you don’t own your house, you can cover the contents of your house like furniture, equipment and personal effect. If you do own your house, you should be covered as well for the house itself.
Coverage means that if the items covered are damaged by the perils covered, the insurance company pays. While you do not really recover the real things that matter after a fire or typhoon or earthquake, at least the insurance payment will help you buy back some of it and replace to a great extent the physical assets damaged or lost.
Word of caution though, read the fine print in your insurance document to make sure you are really covered for what you want.
Car insurance has many types of coverage. The most common are for third party liability, theft, and own damage. Insurance coverage for the devastation type by Ondoy must specifically be defined in the policy acquired. As a minimum, it should cover the cost of restoring your car damaged by floods or typhoons.
Car accidents can be painful physically to the people involved. It also involves a lot of reporting, documentation with the police and other authorities. However, it becomes even more troublesome it you are not insured. If you own a car, insurance is one of the required costs of ownership.
For Colayco's complete article, click here.
Here's hoping we never have to wait for another catastrophe to implement Colayco's suggestions. Here's hoping too that all of you are safe and dry. May God have mercy on us all.
A reprise of last year's run, I bet it will bring a lot of smiles, cheers, extra poundage, even 
