In Pampanga town, rebuilt bridge becomes a lifesaver

FLORIDABLANCA, Pampanga—When the question “What has this bridge done for you?” first popped up, Alexander Medina did not need prodding to react: “Maragul ya saup (Apalit-Pabanlag Bridge has been providing us big help).”

Medina, 57, vice chair of a local farmers’ association, said the bridge ended two hours of walking through alternative routes and risky river-crossings. The bridge also nullified the danger of Mount Pinatubo’s foothill communities being cut off from the town.

Built in the 1950s over the Gumain River at the foothills of the Zambales mountain range, the Apalit-Pabanlag Bridge was destroyed by the earthquakes that occurred ahead of the June 1991 eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo, and reconstructed finally in 2009.

“To get to our farms in [Barangay] Pabanlag from where we live [in Barangay Apalit], we had to walk to reach Palaparan [a shallow part of the river] between Barangays Carmencita and Consuelo,” Medina said.

He said travel becomes a punishing ordeal during the rainy season and harvest time. “We go round and round, always looking for shallow parts [to be able to cross] Gumain,” he said.

This condition prevailed for 18 years for some 3,000 farmers and Aetas in Barangays Apalit, Pabanlag, San Ramon, Nabuklod, Carmencita, Dampe in this town, as well as for about 200 farmers in nearby Barangay Batiawan in Subic, Zambales, according to Floridablanca Mayor Eduardo Guerrero.

“I told [former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo] that this bridge is talagang importante [really important]. No development would come to this part of Pampanga unless the bridge is rebuilt,” the mayor recalled telling Arroyo, now Pampanga representative and jailed for electoral fraud.

Over 10,000 hectares of the town’s agricultural areas are in the upland, alongside 8,000 ha of ancestral domain by the

Aeta, he said. The provincial government has been developing Nabuklod as an eco-tourism destination.

Made under the President’s Bridge Program, the Apalit-Pabanlag Bridge can carry up to 20 tons.

Driving to Apalit and Pabanlag and vice versa through the bridge now takes 30 minutes.

The bridge was a lifesaving edifice, too. Orlando Montemayor, 61, was quickly rushed to a military hospital inside Basa Air Base after a cobra bit him last year. “If not for that bridge, he would have been dead possibly,” Pabanlag barangay captain, Ernesto Manasan, said. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon