Naga: An unexpected natural disaster

For our special presentation on our talkshow Straight from the Sky, we bring you how the Lay organizations help in the fight against illegal drugs and it is not through guns or bullets, but through the recovery efforts of those who no longer want to be called drug dependents or addicts. This program was conceptualized and entitled “Surrender to God” (SUGOD) because whether we accept it or not drug addiction is Satan’s way to ensure an individual gets hooked on anything that does not belong to God.

So tonight, we have with us the folks behind this recovery program for drug addicts, led by Commission on the Laity chairwoman Mrs. Fe Mantuhac Barino, we have Surrender to God program director Jay Francisco, addiction recovery specialist Ms. Linda Tuason, and family recovery program director Yena Mercader. Mind you, they are all volunteers who want to help drug dependents anyway they can and so far they have had 600 graduates, which many not be many, but substantial.

This is the Catholic way of helping our society cope with the scourge that has destroyed not only the individual, but the family as a whole. This is why the fight against drugs means returning and surrendering to God so these people can be brought back into the fold of society.

So tonight watch this program called Surrender to God on SkyCable’s channel 53 at 8 p.m. with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 9 p.m. Monday and at 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday.

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If there is anything that we Cebuanos never expected, it is a disaster of the proportion that we all saw happen in Naga City. This was a disaster that no one expected, and worse, a government office like the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau wrote Naga Mayor Kristine Vanessa Chiong as recently as August 29 this year that the area they looked into was not considered critical.  That was signed by Gerardo Mahusay whom I heard was moved to Manila by DENR Secretary Cimatu.

Now whether those cracks on the ground should have been considered potentially dangerous, they should have looked at it more closely. But then the damage has been done. It’s too late to do something now. Then came a news report that Cebu Governor Hilario David III ordered Jayson Lozano, chief of the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, to suspend all quarry activities in the province. If you ask me, it is akin to shutting the barn door after the horse has been stolen! Come now, there are quarries that are logically correct and quarries that should never be started in the first place. At this point, we should conduct a study on all quarries and the potential disaster they could be inviting.

Right now, what’s on the mind of most people is, why was this area was allowed to be used as a quarry? In my book, what we should do is totally scour the entire 80-plus hectare landslide area and finally get the total figure of how many died. So far the head count is 18 dead and 57 missing. What we must do is search for the missing because I’m sure that many of them are still buried alive and sort of give a final day where the search may be called off.

Because of this disaster, every Tom, Dick, and Harry is look for reasons why the land moved. But I heard that this area was supposedly abandoned at this time, but only a few settlers moved out. Now we have to find out what really happened there or whether this was true to not.

Mind you, Naga has always hosted Apo Cement (Apocemco), which was founded towards the turn of the century. In fact when my good friend, Elias Baquero left for San Francisco last week and saw the Golden Gate Bridge, I reminded him that they displayed the Apo Cement Plant sign that proves that the Golden Gate Bridge was constructed using cement from Naga, Cebu. But like I said, this cement plant is now owned by a Mexican corporation, should our laws allow this?

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