Baguio is Temporarily Inaccessible

October 11, 2009
Lisa wrote:
Although the skies are now clear and the weather is perfect, Baguio City right now is totally cut off from the rest of the Philippines because all access roads: Kennon Road, Marcos Highway, Naguilian Road and Halsema (Mountain Trail) are either being checked for safety or repaired. The effect of this would be that no supplies can go up and down except by airlift until one of the first three is opened.

The Rosario bridge is down, suffering damage when one of its foundations gave way and they are working on a Bailey bridge for that section. This bridge is important because it connects Pangasinan to La Union, where Kennon, Marcos and Naguilian Roads have entry

Alternative route: Motorists can still access La Union and Baguio via Dagupan, San Fabian, Damortiz in Pangasinan, except that those area are still flooded as I write, although the flood waters there are already going down. Folks may reach MacArthur Highway via the Dagupan-Asingan road and turn right at Urdaneta City or proceed to Camiling and enter MacArthur in Tarlac City.

Tourists are stranded with all bus trips temporarily cancelled so I see quite a lot of them walking around, basking in the sunshine.

But We Need Fuel and Food

Because we are now cut off, and folks have been “panic buying” for two weekends now (Pepeng hit us lightly at first on October 2 and hit us hard on October 7-8) so we will be needing food supplies. I heard a plane overhead finally today and am hoping that the supplies that 300,000 residents will need will be coming soon. Hey, by my estimate, about 50,000 of the population is composed of college students from the lowlands, whom we still have to feed. Since school is not yet out, they’re all still here!

By the way, Goldilocks and Red Ribbon are all out of stock, the groceries are fast running out, the restaurants have a lot of items out of stock by now, too and are waiting for supplies to reach us.

I suggest, that since the weather is fine, that people stop using their cars for a while and start walking around as much as possible to conserve on fuel.

Kennon Road will open at 5am tomorrow till noon for vehicles going down, and 12 noon to 6pm for vehicles coming up. And they kept saying Marcos Highway was more reliable…

Typhoon Pepeng made a U-TURN. First the winds were a category 4, which means over 215kph, then sunshine then steady rainfall.

Although internet signals just came back a few hours ago, we have had electricity and water throughout and no landslides nearby.

But unhampered migration to the City of Pines has caused this beautiful place to become overpopulated with folks erecting houses on public land that is not necessarily fit for residential purposes, sticking shanties on mountainsides, along riverbanks and beside canals. But we cannot blame them because the local government has allowed and even encouraged all these, especially in the 19 years after the great 1990 earthquake.

Areas That Were Hit

Some areas suffered a lot of damage, with more than 60 total casualties. City Camp, which used to be a lagoon and somehow was declared fit for residential purposes experienced severe flooding — as usual.

City Camp, which is right off Legarda Road and about 1 kilometer from the Baguio City Market is also where the mayor plans to build a permanent satellite market, borrowing Php250M which taxpayers will repay in 10-15 years if the deal pushes through. More than anything, they should rethink this location because flooding here is a recurring problem.

Benguet was hit hard, even its capital La Trinidad which is a fabulous priece of flat land, where more than 100 persons perished in landslides. The area called Longlong-Lamtang, that has a road connecting Baguio City to La Trinidad via Naguilian suffered landslides.

Read full article in http://www.i-baguio.com/pepengs-second-coming/