Editorial: Keeping an eye out for everyone

ITS heartening to know that cloud seeding operations have started. It has been days since the last rain. There was, the other night, but it was just enough to cool the air, and barely satisfied the thirst of the earth. How worse is it in the farmlands?

With heat like this, we can expect a bumper harvest of fruits, but agriculture is more than just fruits, and farmers are in dire need of rain.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has already announced that the long-awaited El Nio has arrived. Its a borderline, weak El Nino, but quite late, right smack into the countrys summer season. This means, we are up for a very hot summer. Along with it, dried up farms, grass fires, and even forest fires.

There is indeed reason to be very careful, especially for residents who live near patches of grasslands, the cogonal areas, and our remaining tree farms and forests. All these are in danger.

We can only suggest that the city help cut down and dispoase of tall grasses in empty lots, that will help a lot. The barangays can also gather their people to do the same. Grass fires, after all, can start at just one flick of a lighted cigarette and spread fast. Let the residents keep tabs of where the empty lots full of cogon are, and encourage them to keep watch if not help clean these areas up.

The greater danger is in forest fires as we all know that growing back forests take time. We can still recall how fires ate up a substantial area of Marilog District more than a decade ago, again because of El Nino. We cannot let this happen again as Marilog and neighboring districts like Calinan and Baguio Districts stand as the citys lungs and rain-maker. The remaining greeneries and fruit farms there continue to provide us the valuable ground and surface water and the moisture that generates rain for all.

Let it be known to all that the danger of such fires is real and let each resident take upon themselves to be the guardian of their neighborhood.

Published in the Sun.Star Davao newspaper on March 28, 2015.

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Editorial: Keeping an eye out for everyone