Cebu to honor rescue volunteers in bus mishap

CEBU CITY -- The City Government will commend civilians and groups who helped in the rescue efforts, after a tourist bus plunged into a ravine at the Transcentral Highway in Balamban last June 13.

The tragedy, considered one of the major vehicular accidents in Cebu, claimed the lives of 20 Iranian nationals and one Cebuano driver.

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"It is but appropriate for the City Government, advocating the deeply Filipino culture of bayanihan and bolunterismo, to confer due recognition for the exemplary acts of all those involved in the rescue operations," said Councilor Edgardo Labella.

Meanwhile, the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) will call for a dialogue with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Land Transportation Office (LTO) and other stakeholders to discuss ways to minimize vehicular mishaps on the Transcentral Highway.

CCPO Director Patrocinio Comendador Jr. said one of the safety measures, which is due for implementation, is the designation of a "vehicle check-up area" in the police outpost near Ayala Heights in Barangay Pung-ol Sibugay.

A billboard will be set up in the area encouraging motorists who are either heading to Balamban town or to Cebu City to stop and check their vehicles, especially the brakes, before proceeding with the trip, Comendador said.

He, however, said the success of the program greatly lies in the cooperation of the motorists.

Comendador said within this week, letters will be sent to the DPWH, LTO, Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board, City Traffic Operations Management (Citom), Highway Patrol Group (HPG) and the Cebu Provincial Police Office to solicit their inputs about the plan of the city police force.

If arrangements will be finalized, he initially scheduled the dialogue next week.

The HPG will detail some of their personnel to assist the policemen from the Cebu City Mobile Group in the implementation and in monitoring the response of the motorists, he said.

Apart from setting up the vehicle check-up area, the city police force and the Cebu City Government, through the Citom, will also be putting more road signs along the Transcentral Highway, following the bus accident, which also injured 23 other passengers.

Meanwhile, Labella, in a resolution, lauded rescuers from Balamban, including its public officials and civilian and mountaineer volunteers; Cebu-City based offices, like the Emergency Rescue Unit Foundation, Bureau of Fire Protection, Office of the Vice Mayor, Philippine Air Force; and several police offices, which, the councilor said, did not leave the site until retrieval operations were completed.

"Rescue teams continued to work late into the night to pull out the bodies trapped in the wreckage," Labella said.

But mayor-elect Michael Rama said they still have to identify and verify those who helped.

"We might be giving (a commendation) to one and then leaving out the most important people. The award should be carefully and seriously handled," he said.

In a news conference Monday, Rama appealed to members of the public who took some of the victims' belongings to return these, especially memory chips from the digital cameras.

Rama said Iranian Ambassador Ali Mojtaba Rouzbehani asked him to do this, as the items will serve as mementos for the victims' families back home. (PDF/JTG/Sun.Star Cebu)