AGAIN taking "Earth Hour +" to heart, some 500 inmates of the Baguio city jail and their guards switched off their prison lights for two hours and 20 minutes March 29 to keep a tradition of joining the world outside in the observance of the annual shutdown to drum up the campaign against global warming.
Just after the lights were restored at 10:30 p.m., some outsiders who joined “Earth Hour Inside” just couldn’t help but rib wardens Wilson Banasen and Mary Ann Tresmanio about how the officers felt deep relief to find no inmate had vanished in the dark.
The inmates themselves wouldn’t find funny any such escape attempt, for it would jeopardize the continuity of the yearly program that, since they adopted it in 2009, allows them to dance, sing, perform and offer prayers in candlelight, and then listen to Baguio’s top folk and country musicians belt out ballads they readily relate to.
Secretary to the mayor Rafael Tallocoy and Banasen plunged the courtyard and the 34 cells into darkness 20 minutes earlier than the designated start at 8:30 p.m. to keep the inmates’ practice of giving more than an hour.
In 2009, two years after “Earth Hour” was launched in Sydney, Australia, the prisoners contributed two hours and five minutes and then tried to go three hours the following year. They recorded three hours and three minutes in 2011, two hours in 2012 and two hours and 25 minutes last year.
As in the past five years, they were joined by city councilor Peter Fianza, lawyer-musician Jose “Bubut” Olarte, assistant city prosecutor and balladeer Rolly Vergara, soloists Alma Angiwan, Liza Noble and Sumitra.
Also with them this year were retired U.S. Navyman Bob Aliping who brought the house down with his own composition about freedom, the Eight Degrees Band and Rotarians led by Dr. Edward Dogui-is, president of the Summer Capital chapter.
A few hours before the event, broadcast journalist Rose Malekchan of DZWT-WR dropped by with 160 sanitary napkins for the female wards, purchased through donations from mayor Florencio Bentres of Tuba, Benguet, businessman Roy Tabanda, Department of Transportation employees and the reporter.
As when it was launched six years ago, “Earth Hour Inside” again got the support of the Benguet Electric Cooperative which provided the hundreds of candles and the baking materials the inmates turned into “pandesal” and Spanish bread everybody partook off after the lights were switched on.
As of last week, the prisoners were firming up one more of their traditional observances – Earth Day set on April 22.
“We are also into waste segregation here,” an inmate told visitors while they were observing World Environment Day” in 2010. “We have to, as we’re worried that with environmental degradation and global warming, they might transfer our jail to the moon,” he quipped.
That was when they called on 15-year old Noelle Sanidad, then an 11th grader at Brent International School, as their guest of honor and speaker.
Citing their commitment to “Earth Hour”, she told them: “You all extended (the observance) to one hour, which is definitely an achievement, because when I looked out the window of my home that day, it was like any ordinary night. People still continued to use their lights and did not even bother to sacrifice one hour for the future of the world’s children.” (Ramon Dacawi)