It just so happened that the night Typhoon “Frank” was raging across the country, I caught on the National Geographic Channel a show on hurricanes (which is what typhoons are called when they originate in the Atlantic Ocean).
Apart from powerful winds and lashing rain, the show said, one of the most destructive features of a hurricane is the “storm surge,” a sudden upsurge of seawater that produces towering waves with devastating power. So when I heard about the sea disaster in which the MV Princess of the Stars overturned, I wondered if the tragedy had not been caused by such a storm surge. Could it have been something like the “rogue wave” that the writer of the “Poseidon Adventure,” the book on which two movies were based, blamed for the overturning of a luxury cruise liner?
But though the sight of the ship lying upside down in stormy waters recalled the book and movie, it was still a chilling sight. This was no movie. At least 800 people, passengers and crew, were aboard the MV Princess of the Stars. Eyewitnesses said that only about a hundred were able to jump off the listing ship, but so far only about 57 survivors have been found, while the bodies of 100 have been recovered.
Even more hair-raising was the footage showing relatives of the missing passengers beating down the doors of a Sulpicio Lines office and berating a guard when no one inside deigned to open a door to give them information. Even more heartbreaking was a scene in which the parents of a young girl, torn between hope and despair, began holding up snap shots of their daughter, who had joined her grandmother on the sea voyage to attend a family reunion.
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But even as the families of passengers were tearing their hair, desperate for news but hearing nothing from Sulpicio Lines management, the shipping line’s owners were occupied presiding over a press conference. The members of the Go family, who own the company, seemed mainly concerned with defending their safety record and explaining their silence, though I thought they should have been doing the explaining before the frantic families, not the media.
It’s understandable how the owners of a transport concern might feel reluctant to expose themselves to their passengers’ furious relatives. And it’s reasonable that they should wait awhile to gather the most complete and accurate information lest they be accused of adding to the confusion. But in times of crisis, the owners must bear with all these inconveniences if only to ease the grief and apprehension of those who may have lost their loved ones. Opening their offices, offering a place to wait for news, maybe even some coffee and cookies, would go a long way toward calming the upset relatives, perhaps making the acceptance of the unacceptable a little bit easier, a little less terrifying.
One of the Go brothers even rubbed salt on the raw wounds of the families when he announced that the shipping line would “compensate” the families in due time. That was amazingly callous of him, considering the families had just been plunged into the deepest grief, losing far more than any amount of money could ever make up for.
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The morning of our departure for Manila from Daet town in the province of Camarines Norte, Arlene Vergara, whose family owns Pineapple Island, the resort where we were billeted, gifted each of us with boxes filled with goodies from The Caramel Bakeshop, which her family also owns. Considering that we had just been treated to a substantial brunch of the Bicol region’s specialties, it was a gesture well appreciated.
Actually, all throughout our five days in Daet, we had been looked after rather well. Our guide throughout our stay was Santi Mella, who holds the day job of project officer for the town’s solid waste management program, but proved to be a rather knowledgeable guide, ever-ready with trivia and background information.
Driving us around was “Cap” Nicanor Paliza, who is also chairman of the Pamorangon “barangay” [village] council. Without a trace of resentment, “Cap” said he had to abandon his duties during the town festivities to bring us around town, though he did arrive at the grandstand just in time to lead his barangay’s delegation at the Parade of Floats.
For lunch last Monday, Daet Mayor Tito Sarion invited us to the home of a friend to taste the best of Bicol traditional cooking. Before partaking of the feast, we were treated to an exhibition of how the pili nut is extracted from the fruit, and how the small “Formosa” pineapple is peeled and prepared. Then we dug into the lunch offerings, which aside from such Bicol regulars as “laing,” “sinantol” and “kinunot” (baby shark’s meat cooked in coconut milk), also included chicken cooked with pineapple and crab cooked in “gata” [coconut milk] and crab fat (“aligue”).
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The last is a concoction of Adi Pascual, a home-based caterer who got into the food business, she said, because she had been married to a man “who was so fussy about his food, he would constantly compare my cooking with his mother’s.”
Our lunch feast was a co-production of Adi and Emma Cabanela, who had been invited by Hotel Intercontinental some months back to prepare the entrees for a festival of the province’s dishes.
Even the owner of the home where we lunched has an interesting background. Flora Abadesco recently founded Flora Integrated Farms, an agribusiness concern focused on organic farming. She is now investing some P350 million in a pineapple canning plant in Daet, tying up with a major fruit distributor in the United States.
Of course, overseeing our visit was Mayor Sarion. The mayor’s wife Corsini, who aside from her “first lady” duties also manages a delicacies booth in Daet’s biggest mall, is expecting her second child, a boy, next month. We wish the couple all the best and a healthy brother for their daughter Wyn-wyn.
