Pagoda & other fluvial tragedies

This recent Holy Week threw us into a series of Catholic rites and traditions. Domingo de Ramos saw the faithful in church waving palm fronds that are now installed in our windows and doorways. In between that and the Holy Wednesday procession — where images depicting the sufferings of Christ (scourging at the pillar, crowning of thorns and the carrying of the Cross) are brought out — were the pabasa and the cenaculo. Then there were the Visita Iglesia last Maundy Thursday and the pageantry of the Good Friday procession — plus the Easter Sunday rites.

Prior to Holy Week, Case Unclosed on GMA 7 featured another Catholic tradition that had turned tragic at one time — the fluvial procession in honor of the Holy Cross in Bocaue, Bulacan.

I remember that incident (in July 1993) and was among the first to hear about it since I was in ABS-CBN doing my voice-over when tragedy struck. It must have been a Friday and the newsroom was starting to panic because everyone had gone home for the weekend and they couldn’t get an anchor for the news bulletin (this was the era before mobile phones).

The sinking of the pagoda was such a huge tragedy that even the people from ABS-CBN news who have seen and heard everything couldn’t believe what happened. They immediately dispatched people to Bocaue where a number of people had drowned in the heavily silted river.

The pagoda tragedy was news in the next few months and if I recall it right it was even turned into a film starring Kris Aquino. Then, like most other incidents here in this country, everything was forgotten.

Case Unclosed reopened that after 16 years in its most recent episode. Now hosted by Arnold Clavio (the show was started by Kara David who now does OFW Diaries every Friday), the show traced what happened prior to the accident and its aftermath through a series of documentaries, interviews and even dramatization.

The direction of the reenactment is quite impressive, especially since those were difficult scenes to shoot (it must have been like working on a mini-disaster movie).

Even the actors — all unknown — were properly motivated.

But the best part was the very coherent manner in which the series of events were presented on screen. After 16 years, we still sympathize with a mother who lost a daughter who drowned when the pagoda sank — and more so with another mother who lost a son named Sajid, who had initially swam to safety, but being a good swimmer, went back to the scene to save other children until he was hit on the head by falling wood boards. He may have died a hero, but what does that matter to the mother who still misses her son to this day?

Those left behind by the victims, of course, still seek justice and a few names were dragged to court. But this is the Philippines where nothing is ever resolved.

But what really caused the pagoda tragedy? What triggered the whole thing was when the passengers aboard the pagoda all ran at one point to one side to get a better view of the fireworks display. This caused the pagoda to tilt and it was pandemonium from there.

Apparently, there was also the issue of overloading of passengers. It’s always a long line to get on board and obviously no one bothered to do crowd control. Some people denied that and insisted that there were also passengers who’d swim to the pagoda and climb up in the middle of the procession. They couldn’t have controlled that.

There was also the issue of the pagoda’s height. Every year, it had to be higher to outdo the previous one. But there was little effort allegedly done to check on safety measures. Reportedly, there were no drums installed on the side to serve as floaters.

Case Unclosed diligently went back to all those details to see what really went wrong when that disaster took place. But most interesting was what happened to the funds that came from donations to help those left behind by the victims. A cooperative was formed from that and the seed money was used to start a business — sewing, actually. It went bankrupt. The final nail on the coffin, however, was hammered in when the one holding the funds allegedly fled to America with it.

After the pagoda tragedy in Bocaue, Case Unclosed cited other fluvial procession accidents that later occurred in other provinces — from Luzon to Mindanao. What they failed to point out was that two decades before the Bocaue incident, there was the collapse of the bridge — the Colgante — during one Peñafrancia fluvial procession in Naga in the early ‘70s. Some people even blamed Imelda Marcos for the accident because she boarded the barge carrying the venerated image of the Blessed Mother and as per tradition no other female is supposed to be in it, except for Our Lady. Of course, that was all superstitious belief and would never hold water.

However, it was a brilliant idea for Case Unclosed to have enumerated all the other fluvial processions after the one in Bocaue to show that history truly repeats itself. It’s just unfortunate that we never learn from our mistakes.

(On Thursday, April 16: A review of Ces Drilon’s I Survived)