Town drops, fiesta plans

PILA, Laguna—There won’t be a colorful street dance parade and beauty pageants when this town celebrates its founding anniversary next week.

Pila Mayor Wilfredo Quiat said town officials decided to call off the merry-making activities planned for the town’s 439th founding anniversary on July 29 and instead focus on relief and medical missions, especially for those who lost their homes and property to Typhoon “Glenda.”

“It’s not nice that some would be merry-making while others are suffering,” he said.

Aside from that, the mayor said merry-making would be tough in the middle of the absence of electricity as a result of Glenda.

Typhoon Glenda’s strong winds reaching 150 kilometers per hour destroyed 11,454 houses in the province of Laguna.

Gov. Ramil Hernandez on Sunday said 46,557 families are in search of ways to repair their damaged homes and are currently suffering from loss of power and water supply.

In Pila, 650 houses were destroyed while 3,500 others were damaged, Quiat said.

But the 36 heritage houses that border the town’s central plaza survived yet another calamity.

The houses, maintained by old clans here, and the Shrine of San Antonio de

Padua were built in the 1900s. The houses were unscathed during Typhoons “Milenyo” in 2006 and “Ondoy” in 2009.

“None of them were damaged. Those houses are really strong as they are made from original and sturdy materials,” the mayor said.

Vice President Jejomar Binay is set to visit this town on July 26 and meet with Laguna mayors to discuss a government housing project.

“We hope to bring up the situation about the houses damaged (by the typhoon) if that meeting pushes through,” Quiat said.