Let's share with Southern
Leyte God's blessings

I can only add my voice to the call of the Catholic bishops for us to share God's blessings with the victims of the St. Bernard landslide in Southern Leyte.

That is truly an unsurpassed tragic event. The mountain simply collapsed on top of hundreds, mostly children in school. Most families of that barrio lost virtually all its members when the muddy soil and rocks roared down on them sans any warning.

For the past few days, we viewed on television that agony of St. Bernard. And the frantic, albeit seemingly desperate efforts of rescuers to dig out survivors and the bodies of the dead from the 10-foot muddy debris which had buried them underneath.

One can only imagine the profound grief of so many. They not only lost their homes and families, they also saw their source of livelihood buried beneath the mud.

God has been so good to the province's sugar producers this crop year. And now He is calling on us to share a little of the bonanza He had poured on us with those who lost almost everything. There is a special link between Southern Leyte's Governor Rosette Lerias and Negrenses. She is the daughter of former Speaker Nicanor E. Yñiguez, one of the stalwarts of the former pre-Martial Law Sugar Boc. She is also a cousin. The E of "Canong" is Espina. For music lovers, her late mother was Salvacion Oppus-Yñiguez whose voice enthralled a lot of Pinoys in the past.

I am glad that Bishop Vicente Navarra and Negros Occidental Gov. Joseph Marañon have lent their voices to the appeals for help from Southern Leyte. That presents us with a wonderful challenge to share God's bounties with the unfortunate victims of the St. Bernard landslide.

May God, in the final judgment, call us the sheep who did this to "least of" His brothers.

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There was something I overlooked to include in my columns about Antique and its lady-governor, Sally Zaldivar-Perez. It is the secret she had shared with us - that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had pledged to help with funds the construction of the shrine and museum for Dr. Graciano Lopez Jaena in Jaro, Iloilo City.

Actually, that was a vow made publicly in the Central Philippine University with members of the Dr. Graciano Lopez Jaena Foundation present.

And not only that. Manila Mayor Lito Atienza also vowed to put up a statue in honor of the Ilonggo national hero in Manila. Mayor Atienza reportedly acknowledged that Lopez Jaena have sort of been ignored by Manila over the years. And he promised to make up for that slight by constructing a Lopez Jaena statue in the national capital.

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Now the fingerpointing starts. Already there were outcries against illegal logging in the area where the disastrous landslides occurred in St. Bernard. Despite the absence of illegal logging ventures in the area.

Of course, if we have to be honest about it, there must have been a virgin forest in the slope of that mountain. But that was long ago. Lately, the farmers just plant coconut trees there. And the roots of the coconut do not have much holding power nor are they deeply-rooted to allow the torrent that drenched Southern Leyte to drain deep.

In short, what is needed is not pinpointing the immediate cause of the mudslide. The geophysical scientists of the Philvocs had already announced that the rains - too heavy and beyond the normal - was responsible for loosening the soil.

But they did not rule out that illegal logging in the past must have paved the way for the substitution of the ancient forests with coconut plantations.

Now we are reaping the harvest of years of neglect and greed. It is time that our local and national government officials undertake an honest-to-goodness reforestation program. That will take time, but it is important that we now start what should have been done a long time ago. Perhaps, time has run out on us. Perhaps, Negros Occidental will be the next to witness similar occurrences.

Let us act now before it's too late.*

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