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Sunday, December 18, 2005
Cabaero: Christmas for miners' families
By Nini B. Cabaero
Beyond 30
Six families of miners in Barangay Dumalan, Dalaguete town, will be spending this Christmas week unsure if their husbands or fathers are still alive.
They are the families of Francisco Ybañez, 43, Nelson, Villacis, 39, Jaime Sanchez, 42, Manuel Lanugan, 45, Antonio Jose, 37, and Gregorio Amat, 35.
The six miners remained buried inside a tunnel after a methane gas explosion last Dec. 10.
One relative, out of exasperation over the long wait for word on the six miners, brandished a bolo at a team of volunteers from the Philippine National Oil Corp. (PNOC) as they came out of the tunnel Friday. The families have set up tents at the rescue site to hear first-hand and right away the news on the miners' fate.
The bolo incident scared away the PNOC team and might force officials of the Department of Energy and the Ibalong Resources and Development Corp., the Taiwanese company that owns the mine site, to leave the area too. It is easy to understand how families getting tired of the eight-day wait would vent their frustration on the national agency and the mine owners.
As to the rescuers, past mine explosions have claimed some of their colleagues' lives in attempts to retrieve those buried in rock and soil. But this concern for their safety could be imperceptible to the families of those miners whose only sin was to get a job, no matter how risky.
Two other miners have been confirmed dead, their bodies retrieved a day after the explosion. Rescue or retrieval efforts have been hampered the past days by heavy rains and the still high level of methane gas at the site. The water could loosen further the soil while methane gas could kill when inhaled in large doses.
To the families of the six miners remaining at the tunnel, their being unsure of the fate of those buried could be worse than knowing for sure they were dead.
Early suppositions that the six miners were already dead did not clarify matters for them.
They are apparently caught between grieving for their loss and keeping their hopes up that somehow those six miners would still come out of the tunnel alive. And the coming of Christmas day could only intensify their frustration.
Others would wish that this sad chapter be closed and efforts to prevent a similar incident in the future be worked on. As Gov. Gwen Garcia said, she would continue discussions with Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla to come up with protocols and guidelines on such tragedies.
To the families of the six miners, only time would tell if there could be any moving forward for them. The Christmas holidays is such a bad time for those suffering a loss to be counting seconds and minutes.
(ninicab@sunstar.com.ph)
(December 18, 2005 issue)
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