Dagupan BFP’s poor response time

By Leonardo Micua

BOTH the Bureau of Fire Protection in Dagupan and the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO) suddenly found themselves facing the eye of the storm when the San Fabian BFP was the first to respond to the fire that gobbled up six houses in Sitio Dupax, Barangay Bonuan Gueset at dawn Sunday, surprisingly broke out two hours after a heavy downpour.     

Affected residents claimed they and Gueset Barangay Kapitan Noel Bumanglag repeatedly called the Dagupan BFP for help but no one bothered to pick up the phone at the other end of the line prompting them to call the San Fabian BFP, which is a lot farther away from Bonuan Gueset.

Well, the Dagupan fire truck eventually arrived 30 minutes after the San Fabian BFP did, when all the six houses were already completely razed to the ground, the exasperated residents said. 

The claim of the Dagupan BFP that the affected residents perhaps were dialing the wrong number was a lame excuse to save their skin from the fury of the people of Bonuan Gueset, rubbing salt to their injury.  So what is the right telephone number? Or is that a secret?

Among those who lost their homes were families that eked a living, selling fish house to house, said the only thing they have today are the clothes that they had on at the time of the blaze.

And why was the CDRRMO response late as well? I know is it has a brand new fire truck provided by the previous administration. Where is that fire truck?

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Rain or shine, election or not, Gov. Amado “Pogi” Espino III is constantly out in the field bringing the services of the provincial government to the doorstep of the people, even in far-flung barangays.

As I was writing this column, he and Mrs. Carina Espino were headed to the upland Barangay Malico in San Nicolas for the next stop-over of the “I love you Pangasinan Kalusugan Karaban”, a timely activity in the face of the national dengue epidemic.   

We are glad that the provincial government has the “Kalusugan Karaban” making not only to give free consultation and medicines to the barangay folks but also to intensify much-needed information campaign so people would know how to avoid getting dengue.    

There is no cure for dengue so one can only rely on preventing being afflicted with dengue. And the best way is for communities to clean their surroundings and observe the 4S habits. Doctors and nurses in the “karaban” can best explain this in plain and simple language to the ordinary people in the barangays.   

By the way, Malico is being eyed as the other Summer Capital of the Philippines soon because of its temperate climate that is similar to that of Baguio.

Because of its very strong tourism potentials, the municipal government of San Nicolas has asked the Department of Tourism to draw up a tourism plan for Malico, which includes the construction of rest houses where tourist going there would be spending a night or two.

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A broadcaster friend of mine told me he has been receiving text messages obviously from city hall employees informing him that they not yet received their wages for their more than one-month work at city hall. They said when they asked why they aren’t being paid, they were told there is no money in the coffer to pay them. WHAAT?  

The past city administration left a cool P1 billion in the coffer so that is a lie. Could all that money been spent by this new administration in just more than one month? If this is the case, they have a lot of explaining to do.

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While the military and police are now taking every measure to thwart the alleged threat of terrorists to disturb the peace in some parts of Northern Luzon, it is also vital for them to unmask those who leaked out a purely internal memo about the alleged terror plot in the social media that caused panic to a lot of people.

Imagine, fewer people now go to mass because of the alleged intelligence report that the Minor Basilica in Manaoag is being targeted by terrorists. For all we know, those who intercepted the intel memo leaked it immediately to create panic, just as the terrorists intended.

But wait, this could only be a decoy for another thing as their real target could be somewhere else. Don’t panic but watch out and be alert. 

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