EDITORIAL - Bombing out the bomb story

Ever since the unearthing of 29 undetonated World War II bombs at a construction site at the South Road Properties or SRP, virtually all succeeding news stories about the explosive find dealt mainly with when, where and how to dispose of them.

Well, after a few hits and misses, they — meaning the government — finally got around to disposing the bombs. They detonated the explosives at an open mine pit in Toledo City, causing yet another media event.

Actually, it is amazing how the media could have missed the real story about the whole thing, instead of focusing, day after day since the bombs were discovered, about how, when and where to dispose of the bombs, which in a real sense was a non-story.

It is not as if the disposal involved some closely contested election result that people would wait with bated breath for. If at all, all that the disposal could offer was a great photo opportunity. Other than that, it was a waste giving a daily countdown to the big blast.

What the real story should have been was whether the government has made any serious effort to locate undetonated bombs and whether it has done any real accounting of bomb finds, if any, and what it has done with them.

That the Philippines played a significant and crucial role in the Pacific Theater of World War II makes it almost a given that there should be a good number of unexploded bombs all over the country.

That the Philippines has recovered from the war and has grown since then also makes it a given that in the ensuing large scale development, especially in the expansion of communities to large urban centers, construction will likely kick up some bombs now and then, as in the SRP.

Unexploded bombs are not the same as land mines, which can explode on contact. But they are not harmless relics of warfare either. They still deserve the same aggressiveness with which other nations are pursuing the search for, and disposal of, land mines.