In Photo: Soldiers from the US Army and counterparts from the Philippine military build a footbridge over a swamp in sitio Matana, Masinloc, Zambales. (Henry Empeño)
SITIO MATANA, Masinloc, Zambales—In this part of Masinloc town, residents have to cross two hanging footbridges to reach their homes and farms in the remote hills of Barangay Tapuac.
Not much of a problem there during summer, but in the rainy season, when the rivers get swollen and tree trunks and branches and other debris from the mountain float downstream and get entangled on the bridges, passage to this rural area becomes both unsafe and difficult.
“People here get stranded for days on end, especially when there’s a typhoon,” Mely Eclarinal said on Saturday while she tended her makeshift halo-halo stall by the roadside near the Tapuac footbridge. “Sometimes, the hanging bridge gets washed out and residents had to pass through another footbridge in the next sitio. Kawawa talaga sila.”
These days, however, residents consider themselves doubly blessed as workers from two separate engineering outfits race to complete their projects before the rainy season starts.
The first project would lay down a steel structure across the Tapuac River and replace the dilapidated footbridge that often loses its planking to turbulent current when the river gets flooded.
ON Saturday a crew of five cut the steel-rod innards of concrete posts driven into the silt. The posts had already hit rock-bottom and would no longer budge even with repeated blows from a steam hammer so they had to be trimmed down to the desired height.
“This is a project of Governor Ebdane,” one of the crew members said, identifying himself and his companions as coming from the Provincial Engineering Office.
“Farther up there is what you wanted to see,” he said, thumbing the direction across the river. “That’s the bridge being built by Balikatan.”
Past the rickety footbridge with planks replaced just last month when the Balikatan crew came to town, past groves of mango and barren fields baking in a fierce noonday heat, another footbridge is rising over a swampy waterway lined with nipa palms.
Helmeted men in fatigue uniform, numbering eight to 10, worked either end of the wooden suspension bridge, laying down concrete blocks and pasting over mortar. Between them, a brown-shirted US Army soldier and a Philippine Army trooper in black shirt manhandled the needed hollow blocks, nimbly traversing the narrow walkway suspended by cables some 12 feet high in the air.
Sgt. First Class Gerald Miller from the 130th Infantry Brigade 84th Engineering Battalion of the US Army’s 643rd Engineering Company, obliged for a brief interview on behalf of the senior officer in the work site.
“We built this from the ground up,” Miller said. “The construction materials and supplies were sourced from local suppliers, but all the equipment necessary for this project were shipped all the way from the United States.”
The new structure, which is 88 meters long, would replace a shorter and narrower footbridge nearby that has fallen into disrepair over the years.
Miller said the whole project, excluding labor, costs around $80,000 and along with the budget for other Balikatan projects this year, took all of three years to plan, source out logistics for, and execute.
A complement of about 30 US Army and 25 Philippine Army soldiers (no exact figures from Miller for reasons of security) started the project in mid-March. He said they hope to finish it all by April 17, or within a work period of 33 days.
Miller said the community projects implemented under Balikatan are chosen from various proposals endorsed by local government units, adding Balikatan teams do the projects where they are most needed.
A statement from the US Embassy in Manila said the Matana footbridge is just one of eight engineering civic action program missions performed by units of the Joint Civil Military Operations Task Force in support of Exercise Balikatan 2013, a bilateral training exercise and humanitarian assistance engagement between the armed forces of the Republic of the Philippines and that of the United States of America.
Elsewhere in the province, other Balikatan teams were repairing schoolhouses, providing dental and medical checkups, giving veterinary services and doing community-relations work for orphans.
Here in Matana, the project was well-received by local folks, Miller said, adding, “They are very cooperative.”
The two bridge projects, said Tapuac native Danilo Ejes, would be a big relief to some 20 or so families living in this far-flung sitio that borders the farming villages of Santa Rita and Baloganon and the mining barangay of Taltal.
The steel bridge project of the Zambales government, Ejes said, would give the residents a safe link to the Tapuac village proper even during stormy weather, and would also allow vehicles to reach Sitio Matana through a direct route for the first time.
Similarly, the new footbridge built under the Balikatan program would ensure safe, easy access to and from the hinterlands of Matana.
“It’s a complementary thing. One wouldn’t work as well without the other,” chimed in Ramon Esmele, who visited the area from the nearby village of Santa Rita on Saturday. “While the Balikatan project is small compared to the [government project], it will also be a big help for the farmers here.”
For a project built under Balikatan, which means “shoulder-to-shoulder,” that was certainly a very accurate observation.
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