16-hour Caraballo forest fire spares pilgrimage site

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan—A 16-hour forest fire in the Caraballo mountains on Black Saturday almost gutted a pilgrimage site in Natividad town in the eastern part of the province, its mayor said on Monday.

The fire, according to Mayor Rodrigo Rafael, began at 4 p.m. on Saturday and raged until 8 a.m. on Easter Sunday, but no one was reported hurt.

Natividad, which lies at the foot of the Caraballo mountains, is one the province’s fast-emerging religious and ecotourism destinations.

Rafael said except for the electrical wiring around the pilgrimage site in Barangay (village) Batchelor East, no other structure was damaged.

The site features the 12.19-meter statue of Christ the Redeemer, called “Ayat ni Apo Jesus” (God’s Love), built on the mountaintop, and the Sky Plaza park built on top of a hill. A waterfall is just 2 kilometers away.

The Sky Plaza has a two-story octagon-shaped multipurpose hall, a chapel, a 120-meter zip line, picnic tables and wide parking spaces. It also serves as base of a 287-step concrete stairway that leads to a grotto of the Virgin Mary on the upper side of the hill and to a 9.14-m Holy Cross.

From the cross is a winding trail leading to the mountaintop, where the statue of Christ the Redeemer stands.

The forest fire might have started when a resident burned dried leaves in a backyard about half a kilometer away from the site, Rafael said in a telephone interview, quoting arson investigators. About 100 hectares of the forest planted with fruit-bearing trees, pine, narra, mahogany and other tree species were destroyed, he said.

“We planted those trees. We will just have to plant again,” Rafael said. “It’s back to zero for us.”

Leduina Co, provincial environment and natural resources officer, said the fire was just one of many in the province this summer.

“It’s just too hot. Despite our information campaign, many people are simply hardheaded and won’t listen,” she said in a telephone interview.

Only 15 rangers guard the 146,000 hectares of woodland in Pangasinan, Co said.

“Many of our forest rangers have already retired. But we have already proposed the hiring of Bantay Gubat (forest guards),” she said.

The inaccessibility of areas where the fires broke out and the lack of firefighting equipment have made it difficult for Co’s office to address the problem.