I've been writing software since the early 70s and have used a lot of languages, some strongly typed (for example pascal, modula, simula, PL/whatever) and weakly typed (C, of course). I've used all the above languages to write significant chunks of system software. There is a reason that C is, far and away, the language of choice for system software (think OSes, debuggers, etc) - it is very efficient. I can't imagine writing an OS in Pascal because the strong typing makes it a hassle to deal with pointers other than exactly as Wirth intended, for example. In C, it's trivial, you cast/diddle a pointer to look, for example, at the next byte, regardless of what type it points to. but it is important to keep the power tools out of kids' hands.
Years ago, I watched a group of coworkers try to write an OS in a certain strongly typed language. This was during the heyday of the "its the tool not author" trend in the industry. They never met their performance and size goals. A project post-mortem I attended identified strong typing as a significant contributor to the problem. their defect rate was not significantly lower than other projects written in C. Another finding was that the tool does not improve the quality of the product: good programmers write good quality code regardless of the tools and mediocre programmers write mediocre code no matter what.
saying C is bad because it allows you write bad code is like saying English is a bad language because it is easy to write gibberish (or rap lyrics) in it.