Saturday, September 15, 2007 Classes in Baksan suspended By Rene H. Martel Sun.Star Staff Reporter
CLASSES in Baksan Elementary School in Barangay Sapangdaku, Cebu City were suspended indefinitely until the teachers and students have enough instructional materials and school supplies.
Their books, school bags, lesson plans and other school equipment were soaked and covered with mud, while some were swept away by murky water when the Guadalupe River flooded the school last Wednesday.
“We can’t tell yet when the classes will resume because the teachers and student don’t have anything to use. Everything is covered in mud. We didn’t expect the flood to be that bad and we learned it was the first time the water rose that high,” said school principal Grace Flores.
While saving some of the school equipment and guiding teachers out of the campus at the time of the flooding, Flores suffered a deep gash in her right sole, which required several stitches.
She asked the City Government and well-meaning people to donate school supplies to the students, who lost theirs when they left their bags behind when they rushed out of the school.
The students went home without their bags, which they left in the classrooms to keep their notebooks and books from getting wet in the rain.
“The school bags, the students’ things, they were all washed away. The books were all damaged, too,” Flores said in Cebuano.
Demolition
City Councilor Gerardo Carillo, who visited the school yesterday, said the City will tap its calamity fund to replace the books and the students’ things.
He said Mayor Tomas Osmeña already authorized the demolition of at least 300 houses in at least five barangays along the Guadalupe River.
Of the number, 48 houses are in Sapangdaku. But Barangay Captain Rolando Gilbuena told TV Patrol Cebu yesterday that there are now only 44 houses because four of them were swept away by last Wednesday’s flashflood.
For his part, education consultant Joy Augustus Young said it is now “very imperative” for Gilbuena to make good his promise to find a suitable place to relocate the school.
Young said that when he became the City’s education consultant in 2004, Baksan was among the problems he tried to address.
The school is situated right by the riverbank and is protected from the raging waters only by a six-foot high fence.
Since the fence did not really encompass the school campus, water reached the school when the river overflowed Wednesday afternoon.
Baksan Elementary School Parent-Teacher Community Association president Paul Dinopol said the City should raise the riprap wall blocking the portion of the river so that when the water rises, it would not overflow towards the school.
Young said he already instructed engineers to evaluate the current riprap and make the necessary repairs.
Priorities
Carillo said that aside from the Baksan school, the collapsed road in Barangay Sinsin and riprap works in Kalunasan are among their priorities.
Young also said that the riverbed is growing wide each year and that the school should be moved to safer grounds as soon as possible.
The school has 11 teachers and 409 students.
Also, residents of Sitio Langub in Barangay Guadalupe are asking the City Government to immediately provide a makeshift footbridge and ladder while it is still preparing to rebuild a concrete footbridge that collapsed last Wednesday.
Children going to the school were forced to wade across the river, whose current was still strong as of yesterday.
A resident said that replacing the footbridge will take weeks while the need for a temporary structure—even that made from bamboo or wood—is immediate.
Carillo said city engineers were already sent to Langub so the program of works and estimates for a new footbridge could be prepared as soon as possible.
