Huli man daw at sandali lang nakisali sa piging, nawa'y ang entry na ito ay magsilbing tugon sa pagmumulat mo sa aming natutulog na diwa tungkol sa kahirapan ng buhay maralita.
Maligayang kaarawan, kaibigan.
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PARADISE LOST
Three months after the infamous tragedy, Payatas residents still remain disturbed.
It was 8 o' clock in the morning when she stood in front of her house to gaze at the never-ending sight of garbage - - a mountain of filth that would later bring tragedy and death to hundreds of residents of the Payatas dumpsite. In a split second, as she vividly recalls, all hell broke loose. The earth rumbled as the mountain of garbage came rolling down, burying her neighbor alive farther down below. July 10 - the fateful morning when the nation was shocked at the tragedy that occurred.
As for Aling Norma, life became much more different. Her house stood ten steps away from the buried shanties so she miraculously survived. As she tells us how she managed to run away from the waves of garbage falling down from the mountain, her tears roll down, a sign that everything is still as fresh as the day it happened.
"Apat na anak ko ang nalibing ng buhay at may isa pang hindi nakikita" (Four of my children were buried alive and one is still missing). She speaks while watching Backhoes dig up piles of garbage in front of her.
As she recalls, they were the squatters behind the Bureau of Internal Revenue Building. They were relocated to a site called "Lupang Pangako" (Promised Land). At that time, the place was still filled with grass. But when the Quezon City government turned it into a dumpsite, all garbage coming from Metro Manila was dumped there, turning it from fields of grass into a mountain of trash that we see today.
A minor landslide occurred during the mid-90's, but this "warning" was not heeded by the residents living there and by the government that watched them. Last July 10 2001, a year after the Cherry Hills Subdivision tragedy in Rizal, the east side of the Payatas Garbage Mountain collapsed due to continuous rains, burying hundreds of families under tons of rotting filth. Overnight, hundreds of cadavers were recovered, while some survivors were lucky enough to be alive. Throughout that week, bodies piled up in the nearby basketball court. The stench of death hanged over Payatas while garbage piled up in Quezon City.
It was a week not to be forgotten, yet somehow the people in Payatas are trying to fill up the spaces left by the tragedy that happened only in this country.
Today, around 210 recovered bodies were already identified by their respective families while 49 others remain unidentified. Aling Nena claims that there are about 75 people still buried under the piles of garbage while many of the residents living there were relocated somewhere else. Out of the 8 areas of Barangay Payatas that was hit by the landslide, five were completely wiped out. The task force assigned by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in the area will terminate their rescue operations of October 15 while the Payatas dumpsite will cease its operation temporarily while plans about its future development is still being formulated.
There are rumors that the sight might be turned into a memorial park in memory of the numerous victims of the tragedy.
As for Aling Nena and the rest of the residents living in the area, they will not wait for the government to relocate them again somewhere. They had accepted to let the tragedy be left in the deepest recesses of their minds.
Leaving the dumpsite, we can still see the despair in the faces of the residents caused by the tragedy despite their smiling faces and seemingly normal lives. While the site lingers in our view, over the distance lay the municipalities of San Mateo and Montalban and the La Mesa Water Dam.
- with reports from Kapre
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Article written during my junior college year for our news magazine finals project. Grammar lapses and word usage were left uncorrected to give respects to its young aspiring writers. Now that my zest to experience the other side of life has been awakened, expect more blog entries that delves on these subjects from now on.
Thank you Gibo for letting my eyes see again.
Maligayang kaarawan, kaibigan.
---
PARADISE LOST
Three months after the infamous tragedy, Payatas residents still remain disturbed.
It was 8 o' clock in the morning when she stood in front of her house to gaze at the never-ending sight of garbage - - a mountain of filth that would later bring tragedy and death to hundreds of residents of the Payatas dumpsite. In a split second, as she vividly recalls, all hell broke loose. The earth rumbled as the mountain of garbage came rolling down, burying her neighbor alive farther down below. July 10 - the fateful morning when the nation was shocked at the tragedy that occurred.
As for Aling Norma, life became much more different. Her house stood ten steps away from the buried shanties so she miraculously survived. As she tells us how she managed to run away from the waves of garbage falling down from the mountain, her tears roll down, a sign that everything is still as fresh as the day it happened.
"Apat na anak ko ang nalibing ng buhay at may isa pang hindi nakikita" (Four of my children were buried alive and one is still missing). She speaks while watching Backhoes dig up piles of garbage in front of her.
As she recalls, they were the squatters behind the Bureau of Internal Revenue Building. They were relocated to a site called "Lupang Pangako" (Promised Land). At that time, the place was still filled with grass. But when the Quezon City government turned it into a dumpsite, all garbage coming from Metro Manila was dumped there, turning it from fields of grass into a mountain of trash that we see today.
A minor landslide occurred during the mid-90's, but this "warning" was not heeded by the residents living there and by the government that watched them. Last July 10 2001, a year after the Cherry Hills Subdivision tragedy in Rizal, the east side of the Payatas Garbage Mountain collapsed due to continuous rains, burying hundreds of families under tons of rotting filth. Overnight, hundreds of cadavers were recovered, while some survivors were lucky enough to be alive. Throughout that week, bodies piled up in the nearby basketball court. The stench of death hanged over Payatas while garbage piled up in Quezon City.
It was a week not to be forgotten, yet somehow the people in Payatas are trying to fill up the spaces left by the tragedy that happened only in this country.
Today, around 210 recovered bodies were already identified by their respective families while 49 others remain unidentified. Aling Nena claims that there are about 75 people still buried under the piles of garbage while many of the residents living there were relocated somewhere else. Out of the 8 areas of Barangay Payatas that was hit by the landslide, five were completely wiped out. The task force assigned by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in the area will terminate their rescue operations of October 15 while the Payatas dumpsite will cease its operation temporarily while plans about its future development is still being formulated.
There are rumors that the sight might be turned into a memorial park in memory of the numerous victims of the tragedy.
As for Aling Nena and the rest of the residents living in the area, they will not wait for the government to relocate them again somewhere. They had accepted to let the tragedy be left in the deepest recesses of their minds.
Leaving the dumpsite, we can still see the despair in the faces of the residents caused by the tragedy despite their smiling faces and seemingly normal lives. While the site lingers in our view, over the distance lay the municipalities of San Mateo and Montalban and the La Mesa Water Dam.
- with reports from Kapre
---
Article written during my junior college year for our news magazine finals project. Grammar lapses and word usage were left uncorrected to give respects to its young aspiring writers. Now that my zest to experience the other side of life has been awakened, expect more blog entries that delves on these subjects from now on.
Thank you Gibo for letting my eyes see again.
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