BAGUIO CITY – Barangay officials and media practitioners trooped to Busol watershed last July 16 for the city’s annual earthquake memorial rites in honor of those who perished in the killer temblor 29 years ago.
Punong barangays, kagawads and volunteers from the city’s 20 districts, print and broadcast media members of the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club (BCBC) headed by radio anchor Jordan Tablac and members of the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (CDRRMO) headed by Local Disaster Risk Reduction Management Officer IV Yolanda Munar hiked and planted pine tree saplings at the watershed as living memorials in honor of the victims under the Eco-Walk environmental awareness program pioneered by the media group in 1992.
The BCBC members set aside saplings in honor of their recently departed colleagues media gurus and BCBC elders Narciso Padilla, Domecio Cimatu, and Ramon Dacawi who brained the Eco-Walk program and the tree memorial rites and retired Baguio Bishop Carlito Cenzon.
The club along with former councilor and Eco-Walk partner Peter Fianza also sponsored the traditional pig offering and prayer ritual for the souls of the departed and for deliverance from similar calamities led by a “mambunong” or native priest in keeping with the indigenous tradition of the Cordillerans.
BCBC member and documentarist Art Tibaldo led the lecture on the beginnings and objectives of the Eco-Walk children’s environmental awareness program which had tutored countless elementary school pupils and even adults on the importance of trees and forests.
The media group had kept the memorial tradition with the city government for years now to nurture the living memorials for the victims which was broached in 1997 by the late newsman Jose Nicolas “Peppot” Ilagan in lieu of setting up a “cold, non-living marker.”
The annual earthquake memorial activity is part of the month-long line-up of activities for the celebration of the National Disaster Consciousness Month spearheaded by the CDDRMO which will be capped by an earthquake simulation drill on July 31 at City Hall.** Aileen P. Refuerzo
