Thursday, December 20, 2007 Catholic faithful attend dawn masses despite brownout
THE Catholic faithful braved the darkness for the fourth dawn mass yesterday following a nine-hour power disruption of the Visayan Electric Company (Veco) in Talisay City.
For the chapels and churches with no standby power or power generators, the whole mass proceedings were officiated without a microphone or public address system.
This made the priests’ sermons inaudible for the latecomers, who could not find available seats and opted to stay outside the packed churches.
Sun.Star Cebu learned that the Veco had to shut off power from 8 p.m. Tuesday to 5 a.m. yesterday because of the scheduled installation of 69-kilovolt concrete poles along the highway in Barangays Lawaan and Linao, Talisay City.
The affected areas also covered private subdivisions in Barangay Lawaan I such as the Camella Homes, Azienda Milan, Venezia and Firenze and the mountain village of Maghaway.
Engineer Rey Matugas, Veco project engineer, said the setting up of 12 new concrete poles was part of the electric firm’s improvement of its primary distribution line covering the cities of Naga and Talisay, Minglanilla town and Pardo, Cebu City.
Matugas assured residents, though, that there will be no more power interruption this month because Veco will resume installing new electric poles in Pardo in January yet.
The Talisay area was the last for this year because Veco had already installed new concrete poles in the City of Naga and Minglanilla town.
Everything went back to normal after power was finally restored at 6 a.m. yesterday. (GC)
