Sun.Star Essay: Harm in blasts

Saturday, December 10, 2011

IT’S just 13 days before Christmas but the festival of light goes on way before Christmas in the world’s longest celebration of the coming of the Child Jesus.

I’m talking of the Philippine Christmas which many think is the longest Christmas holiday on earth; somebody even saw Santa Claus on TV promoting a product in July!

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But as with any holiday, whether short or long, joy comes with the possibility of pain in it.

Here come the fireworks. From September to middle January, you hear the Christmas flash and flare, there’s no hushing it.

Way back before the law “regulating the sale, manufacture, distribution and use of firecrackers and other pyrotechnic devices” or Republic Act 7183 was passed in 1992, the boys in our family already knew how to celebrate safely with fireworks, what with Papa there.

The youngest two boys weren’t allowed to play with firecrackers at all, for one .

For the boys who were old enough in Papa’s eyes, there was a place where to throw the ignited firecrackers when midnight came. The family’s big basura street drum placed near the gate was where the bigger boys threw the blasting paper caps, bawang and what else. The drum would resound, achieving the noise more than wished for with which to celebrate the holidays, Christmas and the New Year.

For more noise, there was a lean, tall tree within the spacious yard to where Papa asked the houseboy to hang the pabuto. We would stay safely away from the tree when its tip was set fire to and blasted away, seemingly shaking the earth while we clapped and jumped with joy.

The girls in the family went down to the garage to push the car horns.

The noise and the blasts are said to be started by the Chinese in the country on the belief that the blasts and the rave-up could scare away evil spirits. If it works, even if not, the fireworks always make a celebration more than catchy, like a welcomed part of the program to where all heads turn, to sing or scream in the happy jolt.

Still, we have the reality of harm in the blasts. One fire which occurred in Ormoc, Leyte in 2006 blasted dead 24 people trapped in a room in the blasting, raging fire. The news even reached the New York Times for its shocking truth.

Then think of news about fingers cut, fractured, the ear drums cracked for life. And victims of the incidents aren’t even strangers, they’re your neighbors.

In 2010, fifty firecracker-related incidents came higher in the year, or 13 percent more than in the previous year, according to the Bureau of Fire Protection.

So, is the 1992 law put into action at all?

The unlawful pyrotechnic products are the atomic big triangulo and super lolo “and their equivalent.” They’re always still made and sold, the illegal act mostly found out only when there’s a fire and someone loses an arm.

It’s said that a Chinese cook, without intending to, mixed potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal and lighted it, and behold! it burst out in flame! He also discovered that if the mixture was enclosed inside a bamboo stalk and ignited, the explosion would drive away the unwanted animals in those early days. It’s even said that it was explorer Marco Polo, the only “international traveler” in the early century, who took home with him to the West the new pyrotechnic invention.

In the Philippines, the pyrotechnic industry was started in Bulacan in 1867. It’s said that the parish priest in Santa Maria town used kwitis (stick rockets) to wake the people up for the Misa de Gallo. A townsman, Valentin Sta. Ana, took it from there, making successful business out of the invention. The family was taught the skill through the years, up to now.

And many have followed suit, some illegally.

A senator is now pushing for “stricter laws,” as it’s put. Or is the strong implementation of Republic Act 7183 the thing wanting?

(ecuizon@gmail.com)