IT HAS COME to our knowledge that the provincial government is planning a road widening of the Arteche Boulevard and thus, has sent notices to the buildings along it to remove the buildings or the fences protecting these structures. This includes, among others, the Old Justice building, the Bulwagan ng Katarungan, the PAGASA Weather Station, the Fire Department of Catbalogan City.
A few years ago, the provincial government under Governor Sharee Ann Tan had embarked a heritage mapping of the province of Samar which included heritage mapping of all its towns and cities to identify the natural and cultural resources for heritage conservation. In the heritage mapping of Catbalogan City, they identified the Old Justice Building and the PAGASA Weather Station as two of their built heritage.
The old Justice Building has been designed and built way back in 1907 during the Commonwealth period by an American architect William E. Parsons who also designed the Gabaldon Buildings and many others, now heritage buildings, around the Philippines (including the Manila Hotel, the Philippine General Hospital, the Philippine Normal School, the Manila Army and Navy Club Building, among others.)
This is a built heritage to be treasured not only by Catbaloganons, by Samareños all the island of Samar but by the Province of Samar itself and even by the National Government. The destruction of its premises violates the National Heritage Act of 2009 which prohibits the destruction of buildings more than 50 years old. This building and its premises is now 117 years old!
As to the PAGASA Weather Station, formerly the Weather Bureau of Catbalogan, the small building has been there since the 1950s and has served as our only source for weather advisory especially during typhoons at the time when there was no television, no radio broadcasts, no newspapers.
Amidst the strong rains and winds, people would walk to this weather station to see the typhoon signal that tells them what to do in times of typhoons. It was a simple signal but it has saved many lives for many generations now.
Why would you transfer the Fire Station when it needs to be where it can respond the fastest way possible to emergencies such as fires? Catbalogan has suffered so much from the devastation of fires, in fact, a fire alarm brings so much trauma to its people.
Relocating it away from the vicinity of Catbalogan is to trigger an insecurity – you, young as you are, will never understand as you have never suffered the traumas of fire that was experienced by the people of Catbalogan.
How can these buildings and the premises where they are located, be considered “obstruction and prohibited use” as you deem in the “Notice of Obstruction and Prohibited Use Within the Road Right-of-Way” you have issued to the building administrators.
They have been there for the past 100 years, serving the people of Catbalogan and fellow Samareños across the island!
Why tear them down when these are heritage buildings?
Why tear them down to give way to a planned road expansion?
PASTILAN!
It took you years even to repair a small pot-holed portion of the corner of Arteche Blvd. and Curry Avenue, at the corner of the United Church of Christ Church; years to start the repair of the Burak road long after you have started its demolition; to repair the potholes in the streets of Buao and other places in Catbalogan; years to repair the long road from Tacloban to Catbalogan (and only after citizens cried and complained of its hellish conditions).
Why expand this boulevard in a school zone? Are you aware that in this zone, there are two high schools, one elementary school, one university, the Department of Education Division Office, the Girl Scouts Building and the building that houses the judicial courts?
Are you expanding this road to accommodate the anticipated traffic to be brought by the commercial building you strove with all your powers to be established?
Are you also in a hurry to collect a mobilization fee for a road project before the election bans are in effect? Or are there other plans?
Are you aware that when it rains, drivers call Catbalogan a city of many lakes? Why can’t you draw your attention to where they are most needed?
In 2016, Catbalogan prided itself when it celebrated its quadricentennial anniversary as a town and city. It prided itself of its 400-year history, a city that can consider itself equal among other cities around the world. It prided itself of its “rich cultural heritage” (often and just recently quoted by its ex-mayor Steph Uy Tan in its storytelling workshop). But you yourselves – supposedly the powerful bearers of our governance – are destroying our heritage.
You have destroyed the Grandstand, allowed the theft of the rare wooden wide floors of the provincial capitol and so were the bronze Pintados sculptures of the Obelisk – you are supposed to protect our cultural heritage, our built heritage – but you yourselves are destroying them.
Catbalogan is our home,
Samar province is our home,
Samar Island is our home,
We, the people, strongly urge our governor, our mayors, and all the officials in government, to protect our heritage, not to destroy them for they are important historical and cultural legacies that give us pride as Samareños and define us what kind of people we are.
(Sgd.) Charo NAbong-Cabardo
Samar Island Heritage Center
