City Camp Lagoon

Here is a photo taken by Delma's son Joshua Samuel and posted on Facebook. It shows part of the flooding damage at City Camp Lagoon.

Mini-Reunion/ Planning Session Postponed

With regard to the mini-reunion for 2 November, Rudy L said...

"Shouldn't the mini-reunion planned for Nov. 2nd be rescheduled? It will be awhile for the city to recover from the ravages of the typhoon."

Also, Delma L. emailed: "since Nov. 1 is All Saint's Day in the Philippines, and people will be either going down to the provinces to visit their dead except for those who are in Baguio. Nov. 2 usually is a family day for some, and the rest would be coming back from the provinces, and depending on the traffic situation and weather condition, I hope we can get as many Cl61 to attend." Delma, kindly cancel arrangements with Golden Pine Hotel since we need to move the dates.

It looks like the essential focus of Baguioites for the next months to come is upon getting dry, obtaining food supplies, attending to the sick and injured, repairing homes, rangtays and roads.

May we please have views of others, and some idea on suitable dates. I would vote for the reunion to be postponed, to coincide with the dates of the annual reunion of City High the first Friday and Saturday of May 2010, killing two birds with one bato. Or if you have any other ideas please share them.

Rudy, because of the time difference it is a bit difficult to get Ludy B-A on the telephone. Kindly pass on the message about postponing the mini-reunion, and if she has some ideas about dates.

Ar B, are you Canada or Baguio right now. But I think I see you giving swimming lessons in the Lagoon in the photo posted on the 9th, to the left of the foreground pine tree and green roof.

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/

Ondong, Pepeng...or Ketsana, Parma...

What Baguio is like during the two typhoons' wake. Check out the video by Karlo Marko Altomonte, a Baguio resident. It gives views of Naguilian Road, City Camp Lagoon, Government Camp, Session Road:

http://kmaltomonte.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html
photo: H. Palangchao, Baguio Midland Courier

Guess.Game 8: St. John Bosco Parish Church

Ar, you are right - it is the Catholic Church at Trancoville, off Roxas Street and Malvar Street. The latter is the street where Ludy's house is located, it is the road leading to Leonila Hill and Aurora Hill. Ludy used to take me to that church (after crossing the Balili River and chanting: Makan Apo, Lumabas Kami Pay Apo at a certain area where some "spirits" are known to reside; probably an ancient gravesite). We would view films like Marcelino Pan y Vino (a Spanish film), or the Miracle at Lourdes (starring Jennifer Jones). And during the Christmas holidays, they had a loudspeaker that could be heard for miles around: a scratchy "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" is still so fresh in my ears. Our maid would sing out, "Pee-ssonda e-ert goodwill tomen, and asked, ania kadi iti tomen?".

And Holy Family is on Naguilian Road, near the Bokawkan Road intersection. Much to my surprise, I would have figured out that you knew where Holy Family is: that's where some of the pretty kolehialas go to school, during our time! (Djok laeng, a)

GUESSING GAME 8: What/where is this building?

Can you guess the location or name of this building?

Clue 1: I opened my doors in 1951.
Clue 2: The architectural style is known as Greek Revival.
Clue 3: People who enter the doors would come from Bayan Park, Camdas, Qurino Hill, Trinidad, Trancoville and possibly Aurora Hill too.
Clue 4: There is an elementary and high school associated with the building.
Clue 5: It is not so far from Balili River.
Clue 6: I am located within a very few tiny steps away southeast, to the residence of one of BCHS Class 61 members.

Share your findings!

Tech Problem

When you read this page, do you get funny characters, something like this:

x.!--if support Empty Paras ) - - > (End if>

Rudy brought up this problem, he can "read" these characters in the blog entries. When I opened this page at the Taipei International Airport two days back, these characters also appeared in the blog entries. But this morning at home in Bangkok, these characters were gone! Please let me know, I may have to do some corrections, re-formatting or some solution. Thanks! (Just click on COMMENTS below and type in your message...)