Dacawi: Apology after the storm

(About nine years ago this month, I wrote this piece about what many may call a rarity in government, someone I had the honor of working with at City Hall, especially during those nights when the storm is on us. Peter Fianza had to be there as city administrator and action officer of the city disaster coordinating council. Despite his having served also for three terms as city councilor, he remains the working government official who does not care to where citations go as long as he does his work. Hereunder is a revisit of that piece for a friend for all seasons. – RD.)

PETER Fianza is a rarity. The city administrator, action officer of the City Disaster Coordinating Council, lawyer and friend, has the patience of Job. It’s a virtue many of us, including me, are wanting of.

His patience is virtue to a fault. Perhaps that’s the only criticism you can hear about the man, even from volunteer rescuers who had seen him up close and personal during calamities. He takes negative criticism, however unfounded it may be, in silence, leaving critics feeling distress over being ignored.

After all, he knows critics help complete a village, which, to be whole, must also have its alcoholics, fence sitters, opportunists and holier-than-thous...

This time, however, he had to listen when some of his men recalled how one officer in an agency accused them of having done nothing in the aftermath of their operations. This time, their story passed his ear but not out the other.

He knows his volunteer rescuers inside out. Those who were tagged do-nothings are among the best, some of the most dedicated, efficient and effective.

From countless experience, they know the antidote for worry and hypothermia: Don’t change to dry clothes as you’d get soaked anyway by the next dispatch to an emergency site. Keep on burning energy, even with the crudest of tools – shovels, picks, ropes, flashlights, or bare hands.

Shovel aside recurrent thoughts of how your own family is faring at home so you can focus on what you volunteered to do –and to try to do -, which is to save lives.

When it’s over, take a gin shot and then, if needed, another. It helps steel and shield the mind from the recurrent image of victims who didn’t make it despite your efforts. Or from news that the one you saved eventually died. Start saving for that heavy duty raincoat and pair of rain boots you didn’t have but hopefully would wear when the next calamity comes.

If you can’t work within these givens, don’t volunteer. Stay home, dry and comfortable, a hot coffee cup in your hands. Put off the radio, as the news would be too much to bear compared to being out there, soaked in mud and flood until and beyond dawn.

So they were repeatedly out there in the dark of night, at the height of typhoon Pepeng, and when it returned and lingered to wreak havoc it failed to inflict the first time around.

I’ve witnessed the courage and daring of these men and women and their colleagues from other teams -- including our ever-dependable miners. I’ve been impressed by their practicality in making do with the barest of tools and equipment. I’ve seen them work almost without rest since the typhoon signal was first raised. They had long fleshed out the culture of caring that is Baguio’s centennial theme.

Whatever negative comment that surfaced was borne out of ignorance, the same reason why, now and then, we hear slurs and mis-impressions about who we are as Igorots, be it by birth, blood, choice, sentiment or heart.

As this is being written, I heard whoever uttered the uncalled-for did ring up Peter and offered an apology. That act of humility eased the load on the city administrator. After all, he had better things to do, like apologizing to the owners of five boats at the Burnham Park lake. Without the owners’ knowledge and consent, he had his boys take them during the flooding emergencies.

The simple misunderstanding was apparently triggered by the fact that dyed-in-the-wool rescuers never flaunt what they did and do for others.

It’s not part of the culture up here to announce what good one does.

Perhaps a prayer former Baguio journalist and now full-time mother, Anabelle Codiase-Bangsoy, shared me years back would fit: “From the ignorance that knows no truth, from the cowardice that shirks from new truths, and from the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, O God of truth please deliver us.”

Gratitude and sense of community are inherent in the culture up here. That’s why then City Mayor Reinaldo Bautista Jr., who heads the CDCC, got calls of gratitude from officials of Benguet and its towns after he dispatched the city’s heavy equipment operators to help clear the road slides not only along the major arteries but to the side accesses like Asin Road and Yagyagan.

That sense of community also made administrator Fianza redirect embalmers who arrived to La Trinidad, Benguet. The body count was greater there.

The culture, too, I guess, somehow lightened the load of then Benguet Gov. Nestor Fongwan, then Mt. Province Gov. Maximo Dalog, then mayor Bautista and the other leaders of our affected provinces. Relatives of some of those who perished asked for body bags, instead of coffins which they themselves later fashioned out, in keeping with the time-honored traditions of our villages.

Even while they don’t say it, what’s heavy for some of the miners and other rescuers comes when they’re back home, after extricating survivors retrieving bodies and finding the missing. As tradition dictates, the cleansing ritual would have to be performed.

So when Gov. Fongwan received word that Ifugao Gov. Teddy Baguilat called to assure support was coming, my Ifugao mind stumbled on an unsolicited advice I didn’t let pass.

Perhaps Gov. Nestor could ask Gov. Teddy to send some “mumbaki” (native priests) to work hand in hand with their counterpart “mambunong” (Benguet native priests) in performing the cleansing rituals.

“Tila ibagbagam; ingkan man, agsubli ka ketdin idiay Baguio (Whatever you’re saying; go, return to Baguio),” he barked with a grin.

With dispatch, I heeded His Honor’s advice.

In the midst of great loss and grieving, humor helps keep us afloat who mourn. Unfounded, criticism just can’t. (email:mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments).

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