“WE HAVE grown tired of the inaction of the Capitol.”
So smirked Barangay Cabalantian Chair Jomar Hizon, knee-deep in murky water, surveying the damage wrought by the heavy rains on Gugu Dike last Saturday.
Hizon was asked if the Capitol had taken any action on the clear and present danger poised not only on his domain but on some other barangays as well as towns downstream with the breaching of the dike.
“In the first place, the Captiol should be monitoring this area so that they could come up with their own plan of action. But as it turned out, it is only us who are here making preparations and doing actual interventions,” lamented Hizon.
Fifty meters of the protective slope of the dike’s Tinajero portion have been scoured. With more rains, it is but a matter of time before the Gugu Dike breaks, Hizon said, pointing to a kilometer-long breach in the earthen embankment caused by rampaging floodwaters .
With the Capitol lifting not even its pinky to help, Hizon said he has taken upon himself to mobilize local resources, including private equipment to meet any eventuality at the Gugu Dike.
Hizon said he had sent his SOS to the Department of Public Works and Highways “for the repair of the chipped area if the rains would hopefully subside. We are going to unite our resources on this with the help of our good and beloved mayor.”
Hizon’s referral to “the good and beloved mayor” – Buddy Dungca, who else? – breached our own floodgates of memories of Gugu Dike.
The October 16, 2007 of Punto! Under the kicker “Stoppage of quarrying at Gugu Creek” bannered “Panlilio destroying Bacolor – Buddy.”
Buddy assailed Panlilio’s cease and desist order for putting the lives of some 300 families and the revered Don Honorio Ventura College of Arts and Trades directly in harm’s way.
And the mayor promptly defied the governor’s order, “to save my constituents.”
Panlilio responded by slapping Dungca with a court case and ordering the Pampanga police office to post heavily-armed troopers at all roads leading to the Gugu Creek to impose his no-quarrying order.
Bacolor barangay chairmen countered with a massive rally at Gugu Creek, vowing not to let the Cabalantian tragedy of October 1, 1995 to happen again.
So we wrote in the editorial of Punto! October 19, 2007 of “Dungca’s defiance” thus:
GOVERNOR Eddie T. Panlilio’s reduction of the Gugu Dike situation as a simple economic equation – “It’s not desilting, it is plain quarrying because what is extracted is being sold” – is an oversimplification with very, very dangerous implication.
Inebriated perhaps by the euphoria over the P1 million daily collection in quarry operations, Honest Ed may now have a mindset fixed on the peso value of every shovelful of sand extracted from anywhere in his domain.
“It’s not pure economics, stupid!” to make a third-rate poor parody of Clinton’s clincher against the older Bush in 1992, and impact a warning to Panlilio.
The stoppage of desilting operations on the Gugu Creek by the governor poses a clear and present danger not only to six adjacent barangays in Bacolor and that revered institution, the Don Honorio Ventura College of Arts and Trades, but to the rest of the town, as well as to the towns downstream the Gugu Creek: Sto. Tomas, and Panlilio’s very own Minalin, not to mention the southern half of the capital City of San Fernando. All these areas having been hit by past lahar rampages.
A heavily-silted Gugu Creek makes a virtual dam, at bursting point in need of but one heavy rain to break and wreak havoc on the low-lying areas. It does not take an engineer to know that, even an idiot who had had some brushes with lahar can see that, moreso the suspended priest who presided over relief-giving operations at the time Pinatubo was at its worst.
The October 1, 1995 Cabalantian incident is much too horrific to forget. And therefore needed prevention at all cost.
The tragedy was never lost to Mayor Buddy Dungca who was trapped atop the roof of Villa Complex, the massage parlor turned temporary town hall of Bacolor, and painfully witnessed the obliteration of a whole village.
Thus, Dungca’s defiant stand – desilt, desilt, desilt – against the governor’s order – stop, stop, stop.
The Gugu Creek situation is basically reduced to: People for Dungca versus Quarry Money for the Gov. Shame.
We remember that in the interim, Hizon undertookhis own desilting operations which earned him a threat of a court case from Panlilio resolved subsequently with aP100,000 fine.
Our October 22, 2007 issue of Punto! Bannered “Standoff ends” with Panlilio’s decision to “re-allow quarrying” on the heavily silted area of the Gugu Creek.
This after negotiations with Buddy by a team of go-betweens composed of San Fernando flood czar Marni Castro, contractor John Sambo, and Fil Rodriguez, head of operations of Task Force Balas – all known close confidantes of Panlilio.
The Capitol even committed itself to undertaking the desilting of the Gugu Creek.
Since then, so much has changed – Castro, Sambo and Rodriguez all out of the Panlilio corral, the latter a high-profile presence in the Balas rallies and picket at the Capitol.
Since then, so much has remained the same, the danger most especially, at Gugu.
So smirked Barangay Cabalantian Chair Jomar Hizon, knee-deep in murky water, surveying the damage wrought by the heavy rains on Gugu Dike last Saturday.
Hizon was asked if the Capitol had taken any action on the clear and present danger poised not only on his domain but on some other barangays as well as towns downstream with the breaching of the dike.
“In the first place, the Captiol should be monitoring this area so that they could come up with their own plan of action. But as it turned out, it is only us who are here making preparations and doing actual interventions,” lamented Hizon.
Fifty meters of the protective slope of the dike’s Tinajero portion have been scoured. With more rains, it is but a matter of time before the Gugu Dike breaks, Hizon said, pointing to a kilometer-long breach in the earthen embankment caused by rampaging floodwaters .
With the Capitol lifting not even its pinky to help, Hizon said he has taken upon himself to mobilize local resources, including private equipment to meet any eventuality at the Gugu Dike.
Hizon said he had sent his SOS to the Department of Public Works and Highways “for the repair of the chipped area if the rains would hopefully subside. We are going to unite our resources on this with the help of our good and beloved mayor.”
Hizon’s referral to “the good and beloved mayor” – Buddy Dungca, who else? – breached our own floodgates of memories of Gugu Dike.
The October 16, 2007 of Punto! Under the kicker “Stoppage of quarrying at Gugu Creek” bannered “Panlilio destroying Bacolor – Buddy.”
Buddy assailed Panlilio’s cease and desist order for putting the lives of some 300 families and the revered Don Honorio Ventura College of Arts and Trades directly in harm’s way.
And the mayor promptly defied the governor’s order, “to save my constituents.”
Panlilio responded by slapping Dungca with a court case and ordering the Pampanga police office to post heavily-armed troopers at all roads leading to the Gugu Creek to impose his no-quarrying order.
Bacolor barangay chairmen countered with a massive rally at Gugu Creek, vowing not to let the Cabalantian tragedy of October 1, 1995 to happen again.
So we wrote in the editorial of Punto! October 19, 2007 of “Dungca’s defiance” thus:
GOVERNOR Eddie T. Panlilio’s reduction of the Gugu Dike situation as a simple economic equation – “It’s not desilting, it is plain quarrying because what is extracted is being sold” – is an oversimplification with very, very dangerous implication.
Inebriated perhaps by the euphoria over the P1 million daily collection in quarry operations, Honest Ed may now have a mindset fixed on the peso value of every shovelful of sand extracted from anywhere in his domain.
“It’s not pure economics, stupid!” to make a third-rate poor parody of Clinton’s clincher against the older Bush in 1992, and impact a warning to Panlilio.
The stoppage of desilting operations on the Gugu Creek by the governor poses a clear and present danger not only to six adjacent barangays in Bacolor and that revered institution, the Don Honorio Ventura College of Arts and Trades, but to the rest of the town, as well as to the towns downstream the Gugu Creek: Sto. Tomas, and Panlilio’s very own Minalin, not to mention the southern half of the capital City of San Fernando. All these areas having been hit by past lahar rampages.
A heavily-silted Gugu Creek makes a virtual dam, at bursting point in need of but one heavy rain to break and wreak havoc on the low-lying areas. It does not take an engineer to know that, even an idiot who had had some brushes with lahar can see that, moreso the suspended priest who presided over relief-giving operations at the time Pinatubo was at its worst.
The October 1, 1995 Cabalantian incident is much too horrific to forget. And therefore needed prevention at all cost.
The tragedy was never lost to Mayor Buddy Dungca who was trapped atop the roof of Villa Complex, the massage parlor turned temporary town hall of Bacolor, and painfully witnessed the obliteration of a whole village.
Thus, Dungca’s defiant stand – desilt, desilt, desilt – against the governor’s order – stop, stop, stop.
The Gugu Creek situation is basically reduced to: People for Dungca versus Quarry Money for the Gov. Shame.
We remember that in the interim, Hizon undertookhis own desilting operations which earned him a threat of a court case from Panlilio resolved subsequently with aP100,000 fine.
Our October 22, 2007 issue of Punto! Bannered “Standoff ends” with Panlilio’s decision to “re-allow quarrying” on the heavily silted area of the Gugu Creek.
This after negotiations with Buddy by a team of go-betweens composed of San Fernando flood czar Marni Castro, contractor John Sambo, and Fil Rodriguez, head of operations of Task Force Balas – all known close confidantes of Panlilio.
The Capitol even committed itself to undertaking the desilting of the Gugu Creek.
Since then, so much has changed – Castro, Sambo and Rodriguez all out of the Panlilio corral, the latter a high-profile presence in the Balas rallies and picket at the Capitol.
Since then, so much has remained the same, the danger most especially, at Gugu.
