Calamity watch

PANGASINENSES, especially those from Dagupan, can deeply empathize with the people of Negros Oriental who are suffering now in the aftermath of a 6.8-Richter Scale magnitude earthquake that shook their province and neighboring areas last week.

That earthquake’s intensity was lower than the 7.8 experienced in Luzon on July 16, 1990, but the fear and trauma faced by our brothers and sisters in the Visayas could not have been any less. More likely, it would have been more considering how an unverified message, spread quickly through texting, apparently warned people that a tsunami could possibly hit right after the earthquake. With the public’s wider exposure nowadays to internet and cable television, say tsunami and people will readily be able to picture grim images of the tsunami disasters in Banda Aceh, Indonesia in 2004 and, more recently, in north-eastern Japan just last year.

The threat of large-scale destruction from natural calamities, with its oftentimes unpredictability, is real. And we, led by our local governments, can prepare for the worst in sensible ways – meaning, let’s get real with our disaster-preparedness programs. A man-made “tsunami hill” on an island isolated from the mainland? That’s as impracticable, if not absurd, as you can get.

Perhaps it is a good thing that the representative of Dagupan’s City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council, which had the project listed on its budget proposal, appeared totally clueless about that plan. It would be a total waste of the people’s money to even just plan for such a no-brainer idea.

Now the question that begs to be asked: Who put that project in the proposal and what is the intention? It seems the answer is another corruption calamity threatening the city.

*      *      *      *     *      *

Magic 8

SIXTEEN senators are needed to convict Renato Corona, eight to acquit.

To collect 16 votes is hard but not eight.  Already, many saw seeming partiality showed on Monday when five senators reportedly voted to grant the defense panel’s motion for reconsideration regarding the Senate’s decision to allow to subpoena Corona’s bank documents and bank officials as moved by the prosecutors.

If that should be the trend, it’d only take three more senators to join the five to complete the Magic 8 that would finally hand a not-guilty verdict on Corona. The suspense reel rolls on and on and on.

Back to Homepage

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments