Education is vital on the future of every each of us, but for our safety to be compromised by doing so, then this matter is not simply about what’s ahead of us, but rather what could happen right now. Casimiro A. Ynares Sr. Memorial National High School (CAYSMNHS) is never a safe place to begin with, and the fact that the school grounds is “earthquake-prone” and located nearby a police station where a provincial jail and bomb storage is found is disturbing.
Earthquake Alarms sounded the corridors in the afternoon shift of September 13, 2019. Every students and teachers vacated their places to have their expected daily earthquake drills, a process done to avoid casualties during an emergency, only that the event is not a practice but rather a real thing.
The problem lies on the fact that every each of these people never expected the drill to be a real ordeal, thus comes the usual idleness you would see during their practices: Students not even bothering to cover their heads with thick objects and a chaotic proceeding that was not implemented properly.
To add insult to the injury, the sole reason of this problem falls to the authorities who failed to tell the student body what is the situation at hand, which they claimed is as to prevent panic. But frankly speaking, isn’t it riskier than announcing the truth so everyone can act base on the real thing?
What we ask here is not perfection, but rather to reach the standards of securing the student’s safety which was apparently not observed strictly. It should be clear that the school is responsible for our safety and that they should take this matter seriously.
Meanwhile, four vintage bombs were found on the entrance of the Office of the Explosive Ordinance Unit (EOD) last March 2019, which are reported to be on disposal after being recovered on other locations.
These bombs are still bombs, vintage or not and it should be a common fact that it still could explode no matter how old it is. Despite of assurances of not exploding, exposure to warm environment which was evidently seen on the event, could instill detonation.
On the other hand, a report from EOD stated that several vintage bombs may be sleeping underneath our feet, as the school, or even the province of Rizal was a bombing site in WWII.
Realizing as such thing existed on our area, isn’t it scary to think that explosion may come anytime as diggings and earthquakes could awake these dormant bombs into a ticking death shell.
Educations must not be achieved in the extent of risking our safety. The school authorities should act in accordance to their committed responsibilities on the lives of their students. Taking these precautions seriously is already one step away from casualties.
In the end, we can’t do anything about our ‘strategic’ school site after all, what’s left for us to do is preparing for what might happen ahead of time no matter what.
THE ECHOES 