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Friday, May 06, 2005
City dads honor ex-seismologist, Pampango volcanologist
By Dante M. Fabian
THE members of the City Council of Angeles passed a resolution Thursday, honoring the late seismologist Raymundo Punongbayan and Pampango volcanologist Norman Tungol who were aboard the ill-fated UH-IH Huey helicopter that crashed in Gabaldon, Nueva Ecija last week.
Punongbayan, former director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) and governor of the Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC), and Tungol both died along with seven others when the Philippine Air Force (PAF) helicopter they were riding crashed. They were then conducting an aerial hazard assessment of Dingalan, Aurora.
Councilor Vicky Vega-Cabigting moved the resolution to give honor to the few good men who lost their lives while in the line of duty.
In a privilege speech, Cabigting said their death shocked the nation, particularly Pampanga and the rest of Central Luzon, where Punongbayan dedicated his time to save Kapampangans from the lahar onslaughts resulting from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991.
“I believe that all of us Filipinos especially those who call themselves civil servants or public servants should learn from this tragedy. The death of Raymundo Punongbayan, Norman Tungol and the rest of the victims should not come to naught. It should teach us valuable lessons. Life is short and we need to make the best out of it, not for self-aggrandizement but in service of the people,” she asked her colleagues in the council.
The councilor noted that from the statements of the bereaved families, each of the victims were not just dedicated government workers but they were also men who loved their families.
As of today, only the bodies of the pilot and one crewmember have been identified since they are the only ones whose bodies were intact. The others could only be identified via DNA testing which would take around two weeks.
“If there is a part in our country that Punongbayan is most popular, that would be in Pampanga and Zambales, in a time when these two provinces felt how it was to have ‘the heavens fail’ on them courtesy of Mt. Pinatubo,” Cabigting said.
“During those trying times when almost all hope was gone, there was Raymundo Punongbayan. He guided the Kapampangans through the rampaging lahar and heavy clouds of ashfall,” she added.
Cabigting also expressed deep sorrow for the death of Tungol, Phivolcs chief geologist and a native of Floridablanca town. She disclosed that Tungol is also an Angeleño, being married to the former Malou Hipolito of Villa Angela in Barangay Sto. Domingo.
She recalled that she met Tungol in the 80s when she joined the UP Aguman, an organization of Kapampangan students of the University of the Philippines.
“In a time when most of our young professionals choose to be elsewhere rather than our country, Norman Tungol is truly ‘e pluribus unum’ or one out of many,” she recalled.
(May 6, 2005 issue)
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