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Baguio: My Dying Hometown (2) : Richard Heydarian @inquirerdotnet

- The author recalls the devastating 1990 earthquake in Baguio City in the Philippines, which left the city devastated and changed the lives of its residents forever. The earthquake caused immense damage, killing nearly 80 people at the Hyatt Terraces Hotel. - In the aftermath, Baguio struggled to recover for decades as poor governance led to unsustainable reconstruction efforts and risky urban planning, putting more lives in danger. This was shown when a recent typhoon's first reported casualty was in Baguio due to a landslide. - The author argues leaders need to prioritize responsible governance and protecting citizens from future disasters, rather than just focusing on resilience from victims. Governance failures exacerbated the earthquake

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21 views3 pages

Baguio: My Dying Hometown (2) : Richard Heydarian @inquirerdotnet

- The author recalls the devastating 1990 earthquake in Baguio City in the Philippines, which left the city devastated and changed the lives of its residents forever. The earthquake caused immense damage, killing nearly 80 people at the Hyatt Terraces Hotel. - In the aftermath, Baguio struggled to recover for decades as poor governance led to unsustainable reconstruction efforts and risky urban planning, putting more lives in danger. This was shown when a recent typhoon's first reported casualty was in Baguio due to a landslide. - The author argues leaders need to prioritize responsible governance and protecting citizens from future disasters, rather than just focusing on resilience from victims. Governance failures exacerbated the earthquake

Uploaded by

Jansen Taruc Nacar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Baguio: My dying

hometown (2)
By: Richard Heydarian - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:08 AM September 25, 2018

They lost their sense of reality, the notion of time, the rhythm of daily habits,” wrote
Gabriel García Márquez in his magnum opus “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” a
multigenerational account of the fictional Buendía family.

Sometimes, disasters are so overwhelmingly destructive that only Márquez’s magical


realism can provide us a hint of their shocking intrusion into cloistered human lives. In
many ways, the 1990 earthquake, which brought untold ruin and misery to Baguio and
surrounding provinces, had a similar effect on its residents, though of a far deadlier and
more frightening magnitude.

They say the human brain isn’t fully formed until the age of 4, thus one won’t have
clear memories from earlier years, unless something extremely traumatic took place. I
was barely 3 years old back then, but I can still remember how the temblor felt like the
end of the world, in the true biblical sense of it.

I remember my dad, young and vigorous back then, holding my sister and me in his
arms and hurriedly escorting us out once he saw our little house shaking, cracking and
squealing under the punishing force of one of the most powerful earthquakes to hit the
Philippines ever.

I still can’t recall who was crying, whether it was I or my sister or both of us, But I
knew, even as a toddler, that I wrestled with a pulsating sense of worry about the rest of
our family, including our mom, who was working in the town back then, as well as the
rest of the Forondas spread across the city. The horror of it is beyond language.

For nights, we slept outside under the soothing embrace of moonlight, but terrorized by
the powerful aftershocks that battered an already devastated city. For days, we were cut
off from the rest of the world, as the smell of death and destruction mixed with cries for
help and reprieve, a haunting chorus of misery that drowned a once beautiful city under
a cloud of sorrowful darkness.

After the earthquake, Baguio was never the same again. None of us were ever the same
again. My dad, trained as a medical technologist, lost much of his business. Poverty and
trauma began to take over the lives of many thriving families.

The Hyatt Terraces Hotel was reduced to rubble, taking the lives of close to 80 guests
and employees. For weeks, the whole city smelled of death. It would take decades
before Baguio could recover its lost sense of self and arrive at a semblance of internal
coherence.

Natural disasters can have two opposite effects on communities. The first group could
go the Friedrich Nietzsche way: “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” They
can recover and rebuild, become better and stronger than before to honor the lives of
their lost loved ones, and by leading better and more robust lives of their own.

Or they can just muddle through the postdisaster period, hoping against hope to forget
and overcome the traumatic past without a fundamental rethink. In the case of Baguio,
the earthquake introduced what economists like Daron Acemoglu call an “institutional
drift,” a change in the overall dynamics of governance and societal organization.

While Baguio managed to recover somehow, it was soon taken over by traditional
politicians and extractive institutions, which oversaw an unsustainable, unaesthetic and,
above all, irresponsible process of reconstruction.

Over the next two decades, Baguio, a positively modern middle-class city built on the
American ethos of egalitarianism, saw the emergence of once-unheard-of shanty
houses, widespread deforestation, unrestrained mining, and poor and perilous urban
planning that placed the lives of thousands of people in jeopardy.

When Typhoon “Ompong” hit northern Philippines more than a week ago, the first
reported casualty was in Baguio, due to a landslide. Over the succeeding days, it
became clear that the vast majority of casualties were in Benguet province and the
Cordillera mountains. Flooding and rain shouldn’t have taken the lives of so many
people, if only the authorities got the post-earthquake reconstruction right.

Perhaps it’s time we stopped talking about resilience, which puts the burden of
rehabilitation on victims, and focused instead on responsible governance, which
emphasizes the obligation of our leaders to protect citizens against avoidable tragedies.

rheydarian@inquirer.com.ph

Inquirer calls for support for the victims of typhoon Ompong

Responding to appeals for help, the Philippine Daily Inquirer is extending its relief to
victims of the recent typhoon Ompong.

Cash donations may be deposited in the Inquirer Foundation Corp. Banco De Oro
(BDO) Current Account No: 007960018860 and Swift Code: BNORPHMM.

Inquiries may be addressed to Inquirer’s Corporate Affairs office through Connie


Kalagayan at 897-4426, ckalagayan@inquirer.com.ph and Bianca Kasilag-Macahilig
at 897-8808 local 352, bkasilag@inquirer.com.ph.

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/116315/baguio-dying-hometown-


2#ixzz5S5iFqr79
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