Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Barrita: Frank By Eddie O. Barrita Small Bites
SOME 800 people went missing or were trapped when mv Princess of the Stars, pride of the Sulpicio Lines fleet, suddenly tilted and turned belly up in stormy seas off Sibuyan Island in Romblon Saturday night at the height typhoon “Frank.”
Another costly lesson in terms of human lives for the country’s maritime safety.
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Cebu City Councilor Edgardo Labella, who survived the sinking ten years ago of Princess of the Orient, another Sulpicio
Lines vessel, can only shake his head and lament that no lesson had been learned from their ordeal.
“Here we go again. We have not learned our lessons,” he said.
I quiver at the thought of more lessons coming.
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Hopes for more survivors in the sinking of the 23,824-ton Princess of the Stars grew dim after divers who managed to get inside the capsized ferry found only bodies and no survivors three days after it sank.
I hope a joint House and Senate inquiry will make this sinking the end of all sinkings.
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Paranaque Rep. Roilo Golez, a former navy officer and a graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, described the incident as “a case of a ship trapped by the weather.”
Wasn’t it rather a case of a ship sank by authorities’ negligence?
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Sulpicio Lines legal counsel Manuel Espina blamed typhoon Frank for the ferry’s sinking.
When it set sail Friday night, he said Frank was headed towards northwest Luzon but veered towards Panay early Saturday morning, eventually crossing path with the Cebu-bound ferry.
Stop naming typhoons Frank who was known to always have “his way.”
And forget about Bobby for it might blow towards Cebu City Hall and hit hard its top occupant for asking his “very reliable” source to come out.
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Typhoon Frank may have even changed Palawan’s history.
Our tour guide over the weekend in Puerto Princesa, now linked directly to Cebu through Philippine Airlines’ PAL Express, boasted Palawan has no volcanoes, no earthquakes, no typhoons.
She blushed when told Palawan was under typhoon signal number 2 because of Frank.
