General Admission
I’m serious. Make Prez dam Boss
By Al S. Mendoza
WE all know that dams kill, destroy.
But why do we leave them to the care of some managers not maybe steeped on the rules of life preservation, if not the moral side of things?
It’s downright scary, I tell you.
Someone during the Senate hearings this week on the dam issue even seemed to buy the line that what happened in the recent massive flooding was “a judgment call.”
My God, so cold-blooded!
Hundreds died!
Millions, if not billions, of pesos sank into the rampaging waters as a result of hundreds of hectares of crops ravaged.
Do we just dismiss the whole caboodle as merely “a judgment call,” as in a referee’s whistle during a basketball game?
You mean, the guy who released water from the San Roque Dam in San Manuel town did it on pure hunch, if not instinct. Never mind that, perhaps, he was still sleepy, if not drunk, when he pulled the trigger?
How gross!
Abominable, to say the least!
Morbid even!
We are talking of life here, precious life.
The life of a human being.
Even the life of a dog, a cat, a pig, a rabbit, a cow, a chicken, any pet, even a spider – every breathing creature is as precious as the life of a person.
We have yet to predict an earthquake but not typhoons.
As I said, we get hit by typhoons – some really deadly like Ondoy and Pepeng – at least 20 times a year.
In short, we now know in advance when a killer storm is coming.
Ondoy and Pepeng taught us a cruel lesson here – a lesson that should have been learned and memorized from way back: Precautions and disaster-preparedness.
Turned out we only know about disasters brought on by typhoons, never being prepared when we finally get battered by calamitous typhoons.
But to be sure, there is need to release water when the dam’s on its spillage level.
We don’t release water, and the dam will collapse, causing more untold devastation.
So, the question: When is the best time to release water?
Common sense tells us it should begin hours before a typhoon headed towards us hits land. It could even be a day before landfall.
In America and many parts of the world, a siren is activated many hours before a twister strikes, whether it is strong or not.
There is now frenetic finger-pointing on who to blame for the massive release of waters from San Roque Dam.
A class suit is even being mulled – egged on, quite strangely, by, among others, Chiz Escudero – against dam officials.
Sadly, it will all be an exercise in futility. Irreversibly, it will all redound to all sound, no fury.
My thesis has always been that the President of the Philippines must have the final say on when to release waters from a dam.
I am serious, Ging.
It’s like the principle of needing the President’s OK for a convict to die by electrocution. Without the Chief Executive’s yes, a convict lives.
Since dams kill, too, every dam should have a hot line to the President.
Finger-pointing gets done away with.
The buck stops here – at the Palace by the Pasig.
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