FISHKILL IN Taal Lake in the areas of Talisay and Laurel in Batangas. Fishkill in Navotas-Malabon in Metro Manila. Fishkill in Bolinao and Anda in Pangasinan.
Even before the piscatorial extermination was hyped in the media, Pampanga – in Candaba and then in Masantol – had already its own fishkill incidents. A prelude to these was the devastation of the prawn-farming industry in Macabebe, with Mayor Annette Flores-Balgan pointing to the industrial wastes of the City of San Fernando as the cause. Mayor Oscar Rodriguez in turn pointing upstream, to Angeles City. Mayor Ed Pamintuan retorting: Oh yeah? But there are no industrial plants or factories in Angeles.
Wherever the waste that polluted the river in Macabebe came from was drowned in the cacophony of denials and more denials.
Anyways, here’s Alfonso “Sonny” Dobles, chair of the environmental desk of the Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon, saying that garbage and piggery farms may have caused the fishkill in the Pampanga River.
“Hog farms discharge toxic effluents which kill marine life,” Dobles declared, citing various studies too voluminous to put here.
Piggeries and poultries in Barangays Sta. Cruz and Manibaug-Paralaya in Porac and Cutcut in Angeles City have been pinpointed by residents as the cause of their ailments – from dizziness to respiratory diseases, from skin diseases to miscarriages, even mental retardation.
Piggeries – principally owing to the stench of noxious gases they discharge in the atmosphere – as possible cause of the impairment of normal mental processes makes a chilling, albeit yet unproven, factor in last week’s hostage-taking incident on a bus along the North Luzon Expressway.
Isidro Brini, the hostage-taker, was shot dead by PO2 Eduardo Santiago of the Laguna police. This, after the former repeatedly stabbed him when the Five Star bus they were in was about to be blocked by police forces in Barangay Mabiga in Mabalacat. End of the story.
So where’s the pig factor there? Read on. Here’s the police account of the incident in Punto!
Brini, a resident of Barangay Cutud in Angeles City, with his five-year-old son Samuel and friends Rogelio Cardoman, Edgardo Lucena, and Adolfo Garabal, boarded the north bound bus in Manila. The suspect had earlier recruited his friends from their native town of Catarman in Samar to work with him in a piggery in Angeles.
When the bus reached kilometer 75 of NLEx in Barangay Akle in Mexico, Pampanga, Brini produced a long fan knife and asked the bus driver to pull over.
Thinking that the bus broke down, another approaching bus of Five Star parked behind the suspect’s bus. Brini then allowed the passengers to transfer to the other bus, but kept a one-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl as hostages.
The friends of the suspect tried to hold him back but even they became afraid of him and they also moved to the other bus together with the suspect’s son.
The bus driver of the suspect’s bus also fled and refused to go back despite threat from Brini.
At that point, Santiago, who was in plain clothes in the second bus, volunteered to drive for the suspect after he saw the two kids being hostaged.
All the police forces towards the north were already alerted as Santiago drove on and the bus was already trailed by cops when it exited from the NLEx in Mabalacat. Even then, the bus was noted to be already swerving to either side, indicating some trouble.
Wounded Santiago later told probers that Brini, who was not aware he had a hidden pistol tucked in his waist, was apparently agitated upon seeing many cops along the MacArthur in Barangay Mabiga here and was poised to harm one of his hostages, prompting him to stop the bus to engage the suspect in a struggle for the knife.
During the struggle, the cop was able to pull out his gun and fired at Brini, even as their bus hit a dump truck along the road.
Initial reports of probers said the suspect’s motive was not clear, but that he was reportedly “very hungry,” having had his last meal at lunch last Sunday.
Even Brini’s companion could not fathom how he could have done what he did.
So what did him in?
Impairment of his mental processes caused by his exposure to the noxious gases carried by the stench in the piggery farm he worked in?
Close down the polluting hog and poultry farms!
