EDITORIAL - Cold shoulder

A portion of the road that goes around Fuente Osmeña, fronting what used to be the Fuente Osmeña police station, has become the favorite drop off point for relief goods and staging area for samaritan operations in the aftermath of calamities.

It helps that the place is conveniently located in the heart of the city. It helps too that whatever goes on there is visible to most everybody. Thus, even those who initially had not intended to help might be moved into pitching in upon seeing relief goods pile by the hour into mountains of human assistance.

Perhaps the springboard for the area's transformation into a relief staging area was the great Ormoc flood of 1991. Horrified by the incident, Cebuanos were moved like never before. An unprecedented outpouring of aid ensued and nailed the place to what it has become since -- where people go to drop aid.

After the Ormoc floods came many other tragedies and these have never failed to set in motion the same kind of outpouring of human concern and kindness. When Yolanda happened, the place hummed with such activity and saw such vast accumulation of supplies it looked as if the country was going to war.

Then a few days ago, a huge fire destroyed a large portion of Lorega. Nearly 600 families lost their homes. A state of calamity was declared over the area. A relief drive was started at Fuente, just as always happens when a crying need for human assistance arises.

Nothing happened. Or at least not in the scale that Fuente as a staging area for relief has come to be known for. A tent was set up and tarps hung to announce the call for help. A few souls manned a table to receive the anticipated aid. Only a trickle came. So what gives?

To be sure, Lorega pales in comparison to Ormoc and certainly is leagues behind Yolanda. But 600 families is 600 families. And unlike Ormoc and Yolanda, they are our neighbors. They are in the middle of home. They are Cebuanos. Yet the response is, at best, lukewarm.

The Lorega campaign at Fuente, if you have seen it, is a sad and pathetic sight, so sad and pathetic that, had it not been for the nobility of its purpose, might just as well have been aborted from the start. How to define this turn of events is best left to those more qualified in defining the human condition.