OPINION AND OPTION
By ELINANDO B. CINCO
Elinando B. Cinco
Batanguenos are not wanting of much assistance and attention. Their biggest luck is that the place is near the seat of power of the national and provincial governments.
Also, count in the fact that Batangas is an affluent province and their “kabayans” are generous donors.
Because of its proximity to Manila, responding businessmen and movie stars come in droves, bringing with them the needed relief supplies by the tons, and health workers and other specialists-volunteers descend on the afflicted townsin convoys of SUVs and cargo trucks.
Even the livestock and domestic animals left behind by fleeing residents are in good hands. Veterinarians and animal-welfare advocates are at the beck and call of owners.
Media is just as supportive. For example, the banner headline of the Bulletin’s issue of Saturday, January 18, said billions of pesos will be needed to rehabilitate‘Taal’s’ destructions.
I am sure that amount will be made available by Malacanang in due time.
It might also be to the Batanguenos’ advantage to live in a region that is way out of the typhoon belt. Rampaging from natural calamities happens by the decades. The last raging havoc was caused by‘Taal’eruption in 1977.
Batanguenos are not used to this kind of human suffering. Living in basketball courts and gyms, and being made to fall in line during mealtime (there are cooks and service assistants manning each evacuees’ center) is not their kind of living.
But as a whole, the “bakwits” are not complaining. Volunteers are always greeted with expressions of thanks and smiles of gratitude from the locals.
One expression of sadness uttered by an old woman in a crowded gymnasium touched newsmen and TV reporters: “Akala naming napapanuod lang naming sa TV ang ganitong pangyayari. Ngayon kasama na kami sa pangyayari.”
But, comparatively speaking, the situations of calamity victims during natural disasters in the Visayas and Mindanao are of contrasting scenes.
The Southerners are used to being battered by typhoons, floods, and landslides – a few times by earthquakes –each one happening almost quarterly.
On account of the distance, relief goods and other wherewithal arrive three to four days after the calamity swoops down on the region.
Red Cross volunteers from the region, though, are fast and ready to tackle their tasks. But, noticeably, there is always a dearth of local politicians who, as a matter of course, shower stricken residents with promises of cash and goods.
But expressions of resiliency prevail during times of natural disasters in the South.A typical one, full of trust and anticipation,uttered in the Cebuano dialect, goes this way (in English):
“We are helpless as this is an act of God, but with His help, we will recover.”
* * *
Agile radio news veterans fading soon.As an old dictum of journalism goes, be there where the action is. And be there fast! This was what aged and grizzled news-coverage veterans of DZMM-Radyo Patrol did in the late afternoon of January 12, Sunday.
Taal Volcano had erupted an hour earlier and the AM station was playing old songs in Tagalog and in English. Getting a frantic phone call, radio news old-hands Vic de Leon Lima and Alvin Elchico, who were then enjoying their day-off at home, headed straight to their ABS-CBN center and took over control of the broadcast, giving the stunned public a first-hand coverage of the on-going eruption.
Also hastily dispatched to the news site were equally adept radio-TV newsmen Jorge Carino and Ron Gagalac.
In less than an hour, the national audience was getting an on-the-spot news coverage of what was happening in Batangas – the eruption, the ashfall and the black rain, the fleeing residents, local sight-seers and foreign tourists, driving and groping their way in darkened highways and provincial roads.
But over and above the public services rendered by those seasoned radio newsmen, is a looming sad development – their employer’s congressional franchise will expire on March 30.
It will be the public that will feel the void of the voices of Vic, Alvin, George, Ron and the others in their network whose familiar vocal modulation the national audiences have grown familiar with for decades.
Nonetheless, President Duterte is reportedly not too keen on endorsing the renewal of their employer’s the broadcast license.