Once again, the Filipino community of Hawai'i has demonstrated its bonds with its country of origin in the outpouring of donations for the decimated population of Southern Leyte, the province devastated by last week's landslide.

Sadly, the wound is so severe that much deeper remedies are needed to help this province rebuild and to lessen the impact of future natural disasters. It is fortunate that the U.S. military is close at hand for this year's Balikatan joint training exercises. Thousands of troops are being diverted from Sulu to Leyte to assist.

In the long term, the Philippines government must take a lesson from Indonesia and other countries struck by the Asian tsunami and flood, developing a better civil defense warning and response network.

And leaders will have to take much more seriously the effect of unregulated deforestation of its islands, a practice that denudes the landscape and leaves the land in far more precarious condition when cataclysmic storms strike, as they do with great regularity. This time, the loosened soil inundated a village, killing about 2,000 people.

More immediately, part of Balikatan deals with training the Philippine military in engineering and other civil skills that can help Leyte. All of the Philippines' remote islands need better roads and transportation systems, and preparing local authorities to meet human needs can lessen the threat of insurgency as well.