Kennon Road has closed yet again, along with a multitude of other roads as expected for a typhoon strong enough to deposit 300 mm of water in a single day.
Clearing efforts have successfully reopened many of these roads, but a big one remains closed: venerable Kennon Road, the on-again off-again passable road.
Landslides have struck throughout the region. In Baguio alone, 12 were recorded, even more the further out the data goes from the city, and these road closures are partly expected and inevitable from such inclement weather.
But special notice must be given to venerable Kennon, it that cycles from passable and impassable, denying and granting entry seemingly at the whim of some higher power.
Special notice because Kennon Road has been subject to non-stop roadwork for the better part of eternity, all in the bid to make it a supposed “all-weather road,” and yet the road is crucially still extremely vulnerable to inclement weather. More often than not, it is closed to non-residents to give way to continuing repairs and clearing, layers and layers of slope protection seemingly continuing to not quite protect the slopes.
This is despite P3.2 billion of investment as of 3 full years ago, and surely the bill has since increased and increased as more and more repairs have become necessary.
So the question has to be asked: if we have spent so much attention and taxpayer peso on this road, why then is it still constantly in this state of disrepair and seeming unpreparedness for inclement weather an eternity down the line?
Where must there be accountability, and where or what has the money gone to?
Perhaps in the time of our descendants, Kennon will truly have become an all-weather road, but with how many times it has gone through this cycle, maybe we will not see it in our times.
