Mayor Roble survives accident

HILONGOS, LEYTE, Philippines – Mayor Jose Emery “Joy” Roble of this town on Tuesday (May 8) afternoon met a car accident, but emerged unscathed, while on his way home after a transaction in nearby Maasin City.

At 4:48 p.m., the mayor and five others, including this reporter, were on his Mitsubishi Strada, cruising the highway at a relatively regular speed along Barangay Panan-awan, about 15 kilometers from the city when suddenly the right front wheel of the car skidded.

The vehicle then drifted in a circular motion right in the middle of the road and eventually slammed its side into an electric post by the roadside. The impact caused the post to break into three.

The car’s passenger side, where the mayor sat was the most damaged to the extent that its window was totally broken, its windshield cracked and its door jammed that it had to be forced open for him to get out.

To the amazement of bystanders who rushed to the scene, none of the passengers were hurt. Roble after getting out of the car casually walked away from the crash site to the other side of the road where he directed the people on what to do.

Shortly after, a vehicle passed by and stopped. It was driven by Dr. Gayleen Anne Quirong-Acasio who immediately offered a ride for the mayor and his men and dropped them off in Hilongos on her way to Bato, Leyte, a town seven kilometers farther.

In Hilongos, as if no life-threatening incident happened, Roble continued to work in his office until evening—his usual schedule—when at 8 p.m. an unexpected visitor arrived.

It was Rep. Ferdinand Martin (FM) Romualdez, of the 1st district of Leyte, who was incidentally attending a fiesta celebration in neighboring Hindang town at the time. FM rushed to visit Roble upon learning of the accident.

“Okay ka lang? Ano ba ang maitulong ko?” the congressman concernedly asked the mayor while making sure that the latter was all right and did not suffer any injury.

The meeting was brief but it made an impact on Roble who confided to The Freeman, after Romualdez left, that he was touched by the act of the solon. “While I firmly believed in the intervention of God for our safety, including the presence of a physician right after the accident, the concern of Romualdez was hard to ignore,” he said.

The scene of the accident was notoriously known to the south of Leyte area as prone to such incidents, as it claimed the lives of many and caused serious injuries to other motorists in the past. The scarred trees on the cliff side of the road stood as evidence of how dangerous this highway is. 

“Without Divine protection, we could have fallen off the cliff or collided with incoming vehicles or got electrocuted when the electric post fell down,” said Roble, a devotee of the St. Therese of the Child Jesus. - THE FREEMAN