The biggest tragedy of them all

I am no psychic and neither am I equipped with a sixth sense. Even my intuitive powers are poor.

But a good six hours before tragedy struck at ULTRA last Saturday morning, I already saw the whole tragic thing coming.

In the dying hours of Friday, Feb. 3, the head of the household staff in my mother’s house in the Valle Verde area called me up to ask for grocery money. At 11:30 p.m., I left Greenhills and had expected to reach mother’s house in my usual travel time of 10 minutes. Crossing EDSA was a breeze because that was very late and there was no more traffic.

Descending the Meralco Avenue flyover, however, I immediately spotted the traffic jam ahead of me and wondered how this could happen at this time of the night. Eventually, I discovered what was causing traffic.

The corner of Meralco Avenue and Captain Henry Javier Street had been closed to traffic and, later, I found out that the same thing had been done in the other streets around ULTRA.

The next question in my head was: What is going on and why this huge crowd? Several thoughts raced in my mind. Did something go wrong with Erap’s eye operation and now his supporters are starting to take mass action? For a while there I thought it was an El Shaddai prayer meeting because some women had towels on their head.

To solve the mystery that was wracking my brains, I called up my mother’s house and asked the people there what was going on and they told me that it was a crowd that had gathered for the first anniversary celebration of Wowowee.

Finding the answer to my question, I threw my hands up and stewed behind the wheel while trapped in that horrible traffic. Out of sheer boredom, I tried to study the crowd and the strategies being used for crowd control. To my horror, there was a crowd all right – a huge one – but there was no control. In that barricaded street, they just packed people in – young, old and even pregnant women. And more were coming – some with little ones in tow.

ULTRA can only accommodate 17,000 people and it was obvious at that point that there was no space left for one more head. Not for half a head. Probably not even for a hair follicle. But they let them in anyway.

According to some people living in the area, lines were already starting to form as early as Jan. 30 – a Monday. By Thursday, an announcement should have been made that people could no longer be accommodated.

Seated in my car that hardly moved, I watched in horror how people were pushing and shoving each other. Right that very moment I felt a gush of fear grip my whole being – like there was an outside force telling me that something terrible would happen.

No, it wasn’t a psychic vision because you need no crystal ball to see what was going to take place next. Given that crowd – and with hardly any police around (I only saw one in that huge sea of people) – it was the perfect recipe for total disaster. The whole scenario was that of a ticking bomb just waiting to explode.

Stuck in my car with nothing else to do, images of catastrophe crossed my idle mind. The first vision was bombing. Heaven forbid that somebody would be crazy enough to do that. I prayed it wouldn’t happen.

But the stampede I was very sure – though not of that magnitude.

The following day, I woke up very late – at way past 1 p.m. – and when I turned on my cell phone, the first text message I got was from a friend who asked: What happened in Wowowee? Holy heavens! Something really did happen.

I immediately tuned in to Wowowee. But instead of Willie Revillame, I saw Tina Monzon Palma and that confirmed everything.

On my way to GMA 7 to do Startalk, I turned on the radio (something I don’t usually do) and was floored by the figures.

As I write this, I still feel horrified just thinking of last Saturday’s tragic event. It’s terrible – just so terrible.

But what I truly find tragic is the fact that this country has become so poor, so destitute and hopeless that in the process most of its people have forgotten the value of hard work and diligence.

Subsisting merely on instant noodles, does it still come as a surprise to you that most people now rely only on instant fortune and among the youth instant fame through those artista searches as their means to embrace financial comfort?

That we have gotten this low is the biggest tragedy of them all.