Last Monday’s earthquake took a heavy toll on the Roman Catholic Church of Dumanjug. I had warned in this space in August last year that this church and its belfry was a disaster waiting to happen. Some well-meaning but utterly uninformed parish priest decided in 2002 to cap this, the tallest belfry in Cebu, with a nine-inch thick cement dome and, as if this was not enough, rounded this off with cement balusters.
Almost immediately, the belfry’s Spanish-era coral-stone fabric and meter-thick walls made of coral rubble and lime mortar began to buckle, making it increasingly difficult for anyone not to notice the burgeoning anomaly. The Cebu provincial government, under representations made by Mayor Nelson Garcia of Dumanjug, made an offer to help rehabilitate the top and remove the cement in the best way possible.
Apparently this offer was still on the table when the earthquake struck early this week. No one had come forward to accept the desire of Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia, who herself made an ocular inspection of the church on the third week of August last year, to help.
Yesterday, I had to rush down to this town and its adjacent municipalities on behalf of the governor to check the impact the tremor had on heritage structures. I am happy to report that except for one or two coral stones dislodged from the church in Ginatilan, none of the coral stone churches suffered damage as extensive and as frightening as that of Dumanjug.
When Governor Garcia visited the church and offered her help in August, she saw for herself the large cracks outside its southern wall as well as the coral-stone columns that looked so crooked at the top floor or cuerpo of the belfry. If she will do another ocular inspection now, she will be as aghast as I was yesterday when I saw more cracks, not just on the south wall but on all the other church walls.
Worse, some 20 or so cut coral stone tablillas (or squares) fell through the ceiling right above the side door of the southern wall. The belfry is in even worse state: one top window lost its coral stone fabric and is now only held together by the power of its arch made of coral stones, exposing the coral rubblework that was hidden by the tablillas when this church was completed in 1862.
A cordon, unfortunately made of equally dangerous barbed wire, now fences off the belfry but only at a small radius. One of the workers there, the same one who did the cement dome 10 years ago, told me that he climbed the belfry after the tremor last Monday. According to him, the cracks are all over the dome and the sides of the top cuerpo. When I asked him if he would climb again to take pictures for me, he declined for fear that the belfry would topple over. I am no engineer and, therefore, I could not confirm whether his fear is well-founded. But when he told me that the belfry up there had a very large bronze bell approximating his height, with a thickness he estimated to be about eight inches, I immediately understood his fear.
It is not just the cement dome that is now causing tremendous strain on the belfry. That huge bell may also be a factor to be reckoned with, even as strong aftershocks continue to be felt in Dumanjug, which incidentally, faces Guihulngan City just across the Tañon Strait, one of the worst-hit areas in Negros Oriental province. Dumanjug Church is in dire straits, its belfry now with a gaping gash. An offer to help was made. That offer still stands. Will someone out there please accept it?
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Congratulations to United States-based creative writer Cecilia Manguerra-Brainard for the successful launching of her 10th book entitled “Out of Cebu,” the first one to be published in Cebu (by University of San Carlos Press). The overflow of crowd at the Granada Room of Casino Español last Sunday is proof that there is a reading public in Cebu after all.