Holiday disasters

Disasters happening at any other time would be tragic, but for them to happen a few days before Christmas make them particularly cruel and heartbreaking.

The sinking of fast craft MV Mercraft 3 on Dec. 21 off Dinahican, Quezon, which left at least five dead, and the vicious fire at NCCC Mall in Davao City that claimed 38 young lives on Dec. 23, provide a grim contrast to and a painful pause from the season’s prevailing mood of merrymaking.

For Filipinos, Christmas is easily the most anticipated day in a season tailor-made for family reunions. Thousands of overseas workers and other Filipinos abroad pull out all stops to bridge distance and come home to take part in rambunctious gatherings made even more poignant by the thought that such furlough is short and that soon, they would have to leave for distant shores again.

The Davao mall fire marked by the death of call center agents, among them breadwinners, is gut-wrenching as well because of the thought that they were cut down in the bloom of youth, and how their deaths struck a fatal blow to their families amid the holiday revelry.

Even more devastating is learning that their deaths would not have happened had government safety regulations been stringently followed.

The MV Mercraft 3 incident reeks strongly of the same negligent eye cast by officials on the vessel’s passenger capacity that caused the sinking of MV Doña Paz almost 30 years ago to the day. With some 4,000 dead in that collision between the interisland ferry and a fuel tanker, the Doña Paz disaster in 1987 has been described as Asia’s Titanic.

According to MV Mercraft 3 survivors, the vessel bound for Polillo  Island was overloaded, and like the MV Doña Paz, scores of passengers were not listed in the manifest in what seemed like a deliberate ploy to squeeze in more paying passengers.

The Coast Guard had been less diligent on their watch as well, as it allowed the fast craft to sail, confident that Tropical Storm “Urduja” had passed the vessel’s port of origin in Real, Quezon.  But huge waves churned up by Urduja midway on its trip caused the vessel to tip over and sink.

With over 20 typhoons whipping the country every year and with the Philippines being an archipelago with interisland ships regularly plying its waters, shouldn’t maritime safety be a perfected art in these parts by now?

In fact, shortly after the MV Doña Paz tragedy, Congress saw the need to modernize the country’s maritime industry with a proposal for a new Maritime Code. Other priorities however buried the bill to the bottom of the pile.

The case of the Davao mall fire is even more egregious: How could a huge mall not have enough fire escapes and working sprinklers, as per account of a lone survivor from the call center on the fourth floor? What took the firefighters so long — 32 hours — to put the fire under control?

They had no ladder tall enough to reach the fourth floor and no device to bore holes through the glass and concrete wall, the firefighters said.

According to the fire marshall, the fire was so hot it was melting their shabby equipment which was last replenished at the time of former president Fidel Ramos.

But wasn’t this the responsibility of the local government?

As in all tragic incidents, it is imperative for the government to conduct an immediate, thorough and impartial inquiry into these two disasters to pinpoint culpability and preserve the crime scenes, as they were.

This is not the first such tragedy of this magnitude: the Ozone Disco fire in 1996 with 162 casualties, and the Kentex slipper factory fire in Valenzuela in 2015 that left at least 72 dead,  illustrate how calls for the strict implementation of building codes have been ignored or negotiated.

The same is true of such maritime disasters like the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars in 2008, which resulted in the death of at least 800.

There are a lot of finger-pointing and hand-wringing among government officials when these disasters happen — and all for naught, it seems.

This time around, authorities should follow through the results of their investigation, file cases when warranted, amend the law and give it more teeth where needed, and conduct safety inspections more regularly on public vessels and structures.

The government may not be able to salve the grief and anguish resulting from these tragedies, but it should at the very least ensure a modicum of justice for the dead and a measure of comfort for the bereaved.