MALOLOS CITY—Thousands of Bulakenyos are set to join a massive prayer rally today as a call on the national government to speed up the planned rehabilitation of the Angat Dam.
The prayer rally, the second in less than a month, is slated at the mini-forest park in front of the Capitol here with
televangelist Bro. Eddie Villanueva as the main preacher. The said prayer rally was planned right after the first Angat Dam break drill held here on December 13 and was participated in by some 12,500 Bulakenyos, including students.
Gov. Wilhelmino Alvarado said that the prayer rally was meant to drum up support for the immediate rehabilitation of the dam which is sitting some 200 meters west of the Marikina Valley Fault line.
Paraphrasing verses from the Book of Second Chronicles, the governor said, “we believe in the power of prayer because it is promised by God that when His people humble themselves before Him, God will heal their land and will take away calamities.”
He said that imminent danger pose by the Angat Dam forces Bulakenyos to their knees to pray for God’s intervention. Citing previous studies on the integrity of the Angat Dam, he said that the Marikina Valley Fault line can move anytime and might cause unimaginable catastrophe in the province.
“We also believe in the teaching of the Church na nasa Diyos ang awa at nasa tao ang gawa. While God is being merciful to us, we must also do something,” he said. The governor stressed that in asking intervention from God, they will specifically ask that rehabilitation of the Angat Dam be implemented soon.
Records showed that as early as 2009, the Philippine Institute for Volcanology and Sesismology( Phivolcs) has
warned Bulacan on the presence of the Marikina Valley Faultline. In late 2011, the national government responded by allocating $1 million for the conduct of a feasibility study on the integrity of the dam.
The study was completed in May 2012, and weeks later, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) announced that they will provide the P5.7-billion financial requirement for the rehabilitation. The MWSS said later that bidding for rehabilitation will be conducted on December 2012, but two months later, no bidding was conducted.
According to Alvarado, the longer it takes for the government to implement the rehabilitation, the greater the fear among Bulakenyos. In recent interview, ranking official of the Engineering and Development Corporation of the Philippines (EDCOP) estimated that at least 100,000 Bulakenyos will die if Angat Dam’s dike is breached by an earthquake.
However, Alvarado said that the estimate is conservative noting that studies of the EDCOP showed that 21 out of 24 towns and cities in Bulacan will be affected. With population of at least three million, the said estimates could easily be translated into at least two million people to be affected in case of dam break.
