Jojo’s ‘disastrous’ tale

Nora Soriño .

ILIGAN City — In 2014,  three years after “Sendong,” that deadly storm that sent many people to their watery graves here,  Uriel “Jojo” Borja called for a  presscon. It was a time when the terrible memory of the storm had already receded from the residents’ minds here. The people had learned to get on with their lives. His house is in del Carmen, and the C-3 road  passes near his house. He then led the media here, on a tour on the area of the C-3 road parallel to his house.

The C-3 or circumferential road, to note, is a 12-kilometer “alternate highway” that traverses from the Mandulog Bridge to barangay Maria Cristina. This will pass through the inner areas of del Carmen, Ubaldo Laya, Tubod and Suarez barangays.

He pointed to media in that prescon, a mountain near his home. “You see that mountain?” He looked at us as he said so.

Of course, we saw the treeless mound of earth looming before us about three hundred meters away.

“The soil there is soft. It is composed mostly of limestone. They had messed with that area by tampering with the mountain so  the C-3 road passes through there. That is, instead of passing through the already existing roads there in the barangays which is safer.  That is a deadly procedure. It is prone to landslides. The people here in this area will suffer. And who knows the rest of the city…” he let the words hang.

His words had me remembering an incident a few weeks ago then when then barangay chair of del Carmen, Emmalinda de la Cruz together with one  of her councilors faced the Sangguniang Panlungsod because of a huge boulder  that had slid from the mountains and stopped  at the roadside because of trees that blocked its way. She had begged the LGU to help them address the problem. It was a threat to the peoples’ safety, she told the SP.

The SP then promised to look into the matter.

And now this, as pointed out by Jojo.

“And you know what? They had messed up with the mountains at the back of our houses. They wanted to build roads through those mountains at the back. Because of that, we got flooded here one time when it rained hard. The daughter of Jojo Boza nearly drowned!” He was referring to Jose Maria “Jojo” Boza (such a fixation with “Jojo” their names could be interchanged if you are not careful).

He added he had to sue them, thus stopping the work in the mountains. “Them” meant the government, represented by the DPWH. “There’s a disaster waiting to happen!” he stressed.

Those were the words too he uttered in September 2011, he told city folks on air then. This was in connection with some quarrying at Mandulog river, specially that the men working on the quarry were now living in structures near the river banks, he had said then.

By December, “Sendong” happened. Although that was not caused by the quarrying there. But maybe, on second thought, it might have contributed to that great deluge in that year which brought the city to its knees.

What Jojo said persisted in my mind for days. I brought this all to Daday, my favorite salon girl, while she was fiddling with my nails. She’s always seemed interested in what I had to say.

“You know what?” Daday said at length as she looked at me with a knowing smile. “I guess every area in this beloved country of ours have slide prone areas. Because we are a reckless people. We don’t really care very much about our environment.

“So, in every storm, nature has a field day selecting which to hit most in its fury. Today, it’s Tacloban, next it’s Marikina. Then it was Iligan and Cagayan de Oro. And now, it’s Itogon in Benguet, and at Naga City in Cebu province. And remember Ormoc City too in the ’80s. And all the others. It’s like a lottery in every storm. A deadly lottery by nature each time!”

Although expressed in an odd way, I couldn’t help but agree 100 percent with her.