The waters have stayed murky and the ground treacherously slick. There’s barely a patch of dry land left to place candles or flowers.
Yet All Souls’ Day will push through in several coastal towns of Pampanga, even as cemeteries there have remained flooded since June.
In Masantol town, Mayor Danilo Guinto has improvised footpaths made of sandbags to help residents reach tombs and niches submerged under one to two feet of water.
Through Executive Order No. 43, the mayor also designated ‘common candle areas’ in the town’s public cemetery, as well as in private burial grounds such as Sta. Elena, Holy Spirit, St. Michael, and Eternal Peace.
These shared candle areas, set up on higher ground, feature metal candle holders lent by a local Catholic church. The local government has also provided a tent and covered its rear with tarpaulin to shield visitors from the elements.
‘It is difficult to fill the ground with soil or sand because the floods are up to two feet,’ Guintu said in a phone interview on Thursday.
So aside from cleaning cemeteries, he said the setting up help desks, traffic rerouting, parking management, foot paths and common candle areas are what the local government could only do.
‘Far worse’
In Macabebe, the situation is ‘far worse,’ according to Vice Mayor Vince Flores. ‘The conditions are so different now,’ he said in a phone interview, referring to the long lingering floods. ‘Malalim masyado (It’s too deep),’ Flores added.
For one, floodwaters reached ‘lampas tao (head-high)’ in the old public cemetery in Barangay San Rafael on Thursday, according to municipal engineer Lorenzo Vicente Nabong.
‘Residents whose loved ones are interred at the topmost levels of the apartment-style tombs reach their dearly departed by swimming,’ he explained.
Because of this, most residents have transferred their kin elsewhere, leaving the old cemetery in San Rafael virtually abandoned, said Jomel Cruz, head of the municipal disaster risk reduction office.
In previous years, floodwaters would subside in just three days, Nabong said. But this year, that has not been the case. Several families now operate pumps to draw water out of their homes and have built sandbag dikes along their frontages.
The most the local government could do was to create pathways by stacking sandbags wherever possible in any of the town’s six cemeteries, Cruz said. To prevent accidents caused by slippery surfaces, residents have been scrubbing the roads, Nabong added.
Residents observing the holy days can at least light candles at the San Nicolas Tolentino Parish Church, Cruz said.
In Minalin, Mayor Philip Naguit led the cleanup of four cemeteries, filling in waterlogged areas or pumping out murky water. He said he also installed solar lights and reconnected electricity at the sites.
‘Under any circumstance, we still honor our dearly departed,’ Naguit said