A second golden opportunity

The fire that burned down many family homes at Lorega-San Miguel several months ago was a very sorry spectacle. It pained us to see hundreds of families losing their cherished material possessions as the mighty fire gutted their houses in the proverbial blink of an eye. It was even more pitiful to see them scrounge for whatever the fire did not reduce to ashes.

Actually the horrible incident presented to the city government a golden opportunity to erect a community every resident could have been very proud of. Before the conflagration, the houses there were built for the only purpose of their serving as homes of many a settler. They were of so mixed materials that aesthetics was never a consideration. The structures were chaotic in their appearance. Every owner seemed to compete with one another in availing of the services of public utilities resulting in messy tangles of electrical wires, phone and cable connections and water pipes.

Of course there were houses of better planning just situated side by side with those that never benefited from any careful design. In short, the area was cluttered by a motley of good structures and dilapidated homes. The fire was a great equalizer. It allowed everyone to start from ground zero.

The city government owns the largest share of the location. A visionary leader could have seized the chance to construct middle rise structures, distribute them to the fire victims in equal proportions, and still could have enough space for widened roads, open parks, a space for a market, and whatever it is that modern community can make use of. But his honor Cebu City Mayor Michael L. Rama chose to be a populist. He yielded to the pressure of the fire victims for him to distribute the city- owned lots to them. The result is what we see today. Structures are rising without pattern, no aesthetics, neither allowance for open spaces, markets, and even a school campus. Mayor Rama lost that opportunity. If it were music, it would be a cacophony of discordant voices singing completely out of tune.

I speak of that missed chance because today the city government is demolishing what was once the citicenter complex. Of personal note is that the corporation that owned the complex was headed by a good friend of mine and my former Spanish teacher, Mr. Bal Falcone. It is not a small area, although it might not be as big as the place that came to be leveled by the Lorega fire. Yet, despite their variance in size, the citicenter site at Barangay Kamagayan is large enough for a more purposeful and needful structure.

What mind that building ideally be? The City of Cebu cannot be proud to claim in possession and ownership of a unified command center to meet the demands of disaster management. Neither does the city have a sanctuary for its citizens in case of cataclysmic incidents.

I hope the mayor can consider this suggestion or improve the idea behind it. There is this another opportunity offered by the demolition of the citicenter complex. The administration of Mayor Rama may do well to put up a structure right where the citicenter complex was. This building, which is ideally located at the center of the city, can house all relief and rescue teams in the event of cataclysms. It can also serve as temporary shelters for those who are victimized by such events as fires, floods and the like. Should the mayor put his mind and will to this project, the city will be the first in integrating disaster relief and rescue operations and sanctuary or refuge for the victims of such incidents. And we will never mind Mayor Rama's spending a huge fortune of the city as it prepares us against disasters and other calamities.