Giving terrorism a serious thought!

Good Lord, did Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo really say that she pinned the blame on Feb.4, 2006 stampede at the PhilSport Arena a.k.a. Ultra to the organizers of "Wowowee"? We know that there is no love lost between Pres. Arroyo and ABS-CBN, but just because she's President, she shouldn't have pre-empted the results of the ongoing investigation. Of course, ABS-CBN CEO Eugenio Lopez has bewailed the President's statement and is firing broadsides against the President. If you ask me, someone is turning what was clearly an accident into something political in nature. This is something we do not need at this time.

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Former Armed Forces chief Benjamin Defensor, now Chairman of the APEC anti-terrorism task force, has revealed something quite chilling: that most of our airports are vulnerable to terrorist attacks using shoulder- fired missiles to hit airliners flying in and out of our airports.

I do not dispute his findings; after all, too many airports in this country are overwhelmed by a sudden housing development. Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) is one example… where 20 years ago, no one cared to lived within its confines. Today, there are just too many subdivisions sprouting around the airport. Now as to the distance of certain houses from the main runway, it might be a long shot for a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) to hit a plane from there.

If there's any clear and present danger, it is when a plane is coming in low from the south end of the runway, where there are houses nearby. It is for this reason why those barbecue stalls in the north end of the Mactan Runway was shut down. Who knows if terrorists could use that for their evil plans? This is a security nightmare in practically all airports in this country. Perhaps the most vulnerable is the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) where a subdivision is located just after its security fence. I recall a Manila columnist lambasting the noise of the aircraft in NAIA as if the airport suddenly sprouted in his neighborhood. In truth, people who live near the airport already knew that they would suffer from the noise pollution. But when they are already well entrenched, these people even have the gall to ask for the transfer of NAIA to Clark Air Base.

Remember the time when the Lahug Airport was so far away from downtown Cebu City, and the Cebu Country Club was really in the countryside? Well, finally we moved airport operations to Mactan. But then, the subdivisions followed the airport. Hence, if there's anyone we have to blame, it is the lack of planning by our city planning boards. There is no question that Cebu has grown so tremendously - our city planners are merely reacting to this growth, instead of doing what they are supposed to do: plan our cities properly. This time around, airports must give special attention to our problems with terrorism, a problem that the whole world is facing.

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Talking about terrorism on airplanes. I hope you were able to watch last Tuesday's National Geographic special on Air Crash Investigation entitled "Bomb on Board". This was the story of that PAL Boeing 747 Flt. No. 434 which flew from Manila to Cebu on Dec.11, 1994 then on to Tokyo with 292 passengers on board. A terrorist later identified as Ramzi Yousef who came on board with a false identity planted a bomb on row 26. Using a homemade timing device, the bomb exploded while the PAL plane was nearing Okinawa.

As the story goes, because the force of the bomb was facing upwards, not sideways, it killed a Japanese national, but did not damage the skin of the aircraft. PAL steward Fernando Bayot was able to administer to the wounded and the dead Japanese passenger. Actually, this story was one of heroism by PAL's crew, Pilot Capt. Ed Reyes and his co-pilot Jaime Herrera and Flight Engineer Dexter Com-mendador, who were able to land the stricken Jumbo jet to the Naha International Airport in Okinawa.

Until that show, we really didn't get to know what happened to that flight because of the unusual circumstances, like the PAL plane landed in Japan and not in the Philippines and more importantly, because this was a crime scene in Japan. But as it all turned out, Ramzi Yousef was responsible for the 1st albeit ill-fated bombing of the World Trade Center. He was eventually caught and is now imprisoned in the US. It was in the Josefa Apartments of Yousef where the PNP discovered plans to use US Airliners and crash them into public buildings. Alas, no one took this plan seriously.

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