Calamity in Boljoon, fact or fiction?

Really, parts of Boljoon have been placed under a state of calamity because of “incessant landslides?” I was there last Tuesday, staying overnight in Palanas, a section in Upper Beceril, one of the barangays that have been identified by authorities as a “danger zone”. The area affected by the landslide can be seen from the road that starts at the highway and ends not too far away from the boundary with Malabuyoc. It looked like someone had mined the mountain for limestone, which, by the way is abundant in Boljoon.

I spoke to a number of residents when I hiked for two hours the following day and none of them seemed more concerned about the landslide than feeding their livestock or tilling their farm. It was life as usual for them; the landslide was no big deal, they had seen it before. Indeed, not far from the fresh gashes in the mountain, you can see white spots - scars from past soil movements - partially covered by vegetation.

I went down to see the bridge in Camp Franco (locally pronounced Campranko) and found it covered by soil. The force of the landslide pushed the soil in the lowland like dominoes, a local explained. Earlier reports said the movement was related to Boljoon’s squatting on a fault. It now seems that the rains simply loosened the earth.

Maybe, town and geosciences officials have chosen prudence in addressing the situation even if in the process, they look--and sound--alarmist. Also, I heard that a state of calamity frees up money in the treasury more quickly and with less bureaucratic red tape and thus allows them to respond to an emergency immediately.

Still, I cannot help but ask if the danger is being exaggerated in the reports and if the threat to the people’s safety in Boljoon is not really as imminent or as serious as it is being made to appear.

It would be unfortunate if that were so. Things are looking up in the town and they could only go higher with the so-called Big 5 ecotourism program of the provincial government. But who would want to visit a place that you’re made to believe could explode anytime with an avalanche of rocks, water and mud madly rushing to engulf you?

*** Speaking of the Big 5 project, I’m glad that Vice Gov. Agnes Magpale and Provincial Tourism Officer Joselito Costas have cleared the air and agreed to work together. Magpale, if you will recall, threatened to quit as chairman of the Provincial Tourism Commission after she felt slighted by Costas’s failure to coordinate with her on Big 5 and another big-ticket program that the latter was implementing.

I’m sure that Costas did not intend to snub her. He was just too naive to think that since he was honest and well-intentioned, not to mention competent, there was no more need for him to get Magpale’s endorsement before he could execute his programs.

What he overlooked was that Magpale was not just the commission chairman but also the provincial vice governor. When envious mayors of the towns that were not included in Big 5 complained to her and she found herself in the dark as they were, she got mad. To Costas’s credit, he immediately saw his mistake and apologized. All’s well that ends well.