In Bulacan, reviving a lighthouse

VOLUNTEERS are helping bring this lighthouse, idled by damages for seven years, back to life. COURTESY OF Grossmasn Dax-Uy

HAGONOY, Bulacan—An island village along the coast here should get some bright Christmas cheer, courtesy of an 80-year-old lighthouse that is being repaired after seven years of being idle in time for the start of simbang gabi on Dec. 16.

Damages to the lighthouse had kept fishermen of Barangay (village) Pugad in the dark since 2005, after the facility’s worn-out electrical system broke down.

The Sigla Movement of the Philippines (SMP) is facilitating the lighthouse’s revival. SMP Bulacan chapter president Grossman Dax-Uy, a Hagonoy native who has been living in Mindanao, arrived here last week with experts to inspect the damage and to bring out the sections of the lighthouse that needed repair work.

“We are hopeful that we can install it back by Dec. 15,” Uy said in an e-mailed letter to Bulacan reporters.

The SMP engineers said they needed to replace the lighthouse’s lamp changer flasher, its daylight control unit and its massive light bulb.

According to Uy, the facility’s solar panel and solar battery are also undergoing tests.

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Bernard Dave Concepcion, Pugad village councilman, had posted photographs of the dilapidated lighthouse on his Facebook account early last year to prompt the government to repair it.

Concepcion and other village officials said Pugad villagers have no money to fix the lighthouse themselves.