The Brownout Capital

INTO THE BLACK Darkness at San Francisco public market

YOU COULD ESSENTIALLY MAKE A CASE: San Francisco is fast becoming a brownout capital in the country. That's no hyperbole, to begin with. Not a day passes in this town without the quivering of its electric current, whether it's a whole day affair or a 15-minute debacle. It's almost like an obsessive compulsion that keeps washing its hands away from any germs. A sickness that is capable of diseasing the whole region, while its residents, surprisingly, just let it all bleed.

A brownout lasting up to 12 hours is already a calamity to other nations. In fact, it would have been a situation after a major disaster, a typhoon or an earthquake, but in San Francisco, the weather is perfectly fine, and there's not even a consistent tremor that could literally cause the downfall of the entire dispensation. Unless a single problematic lamppost, for example, could cause the entire town for a day of darkness.

San Francisco is a first-class municipality in Agusan del Sur (Philippines). Geographically it is a junction, situated north of Davao and Compostela Valley, south of Butuan, and west of Surigao del Sur, and with a population of more than 70,000 and counting, definitely one of the populated municipalities of Agusan Sur, among the remaining 12 (with Bayugan being the exception). Social life is easy, and a significant portion of the populace is in some ways urbanized, along with the rise of transients living or doing business every year, "San Frans" somehow is the unofficial capital of Agusan del Sur, with Prosperidad (Bah-Bah) as its standard bearer.

For years, the municipality is vying for its cityhood, which is considered by some to be a peso and a decade late, after it had gone through some minor improvements over the past years, particularly in its expenditures. Business outlets have been established, and investments somehow went on the rise from housing to education to food outlets. But it went into a standstill, apparently because the town still can't get over the hump of its old ways, and the bid of becoming a city remained on the precipice of its fatal allegiance to the old order.

But this is essentially putting heat on Agusan del Sur Electric Cooperative, Inc. (ASELCO), the local energy provider in the province. The ensuing monopoly of providing energy to San Francisco has enabled ASELCO to control the currents running around town, as well as in other municipalities in the southern part of Agusan, from the amount of energy used to the flow of information their consumers are getting. The only difference though is that San Frans has a relatively urbanized community than the rest of the clan, so the potential loss as far as revenue is concerned is much more pronounce and palpable in this side of the region. And despite its constipated presence, consumers could only grin and bear it, not because they're incapable of such a redress but because they don't have a choice at all.

Those who have already invested only have their guts to back it up. Brownouts are already cultural in Agusan del Sur. And if that atmosphere weathers on our businesses on a daily basis it could possibly deplete a strong capital in the long run. There have been some shutdowns already in San Francisco, and the disconnect has gone too fuzzy only a few establishments could make a sustained reply. Not that these brownouts are the main reason for their demise, but it somehow contributed to their inevitability. A fluctuation may just be a minor glitch, but if it rains on your parade almost every day, you might not be able to reach your destination.

It's fair enough to say that San Francisco did not live up to its potential simply because the town is not connecting, or better still ASELCO is not doing a fine job of connecting people. We hear complaints about the increases on those monthly bills in as much as there's an increase in the frequency of fluctuations happening just about everywhere, not just in San Francisco. Rumor has it that they (ASELCO) are just using these sudden brownouts to somehow bolster their Christmas bonuses, out of the insurmountable reading it could possibly do to the billing. And for a town that is not connecting, the bolstering could go on for years.

“The first sign of hope kung tutuusin parati is always electricity so iyon ang siskapin natin,” Energy Secretary Carlos Petilla

A false sense of reality. Like Shangri-la, as a friend used to describe of San Francisco. Not exactly sure how this town can be likened to that fictitious place because it’s mystical, harmonious, and happy, things hardly ever felt in San Francisco. But one of the characteristics of Shangri-la is that it is "isolated from the outside world". How fitting it would be if we could tap San Francisco as an isolated place from the trappings of the outside world. Despite being a first-class municipality in its own right, San Frans still belongs to the Devil, a town where everybody knows everybody's businesses. Everything's familiar and close-knit. So even if it mutates into a city, it is still possessed by an evil spirit.

Maybe the town doesn't have any plans of mutating itself or rising from its ashes like a phoenix. Not into a city with the possibility of an increased accountability, from revenue prerequisites to a much higher tax requirement. I don't think the residents are ready for that any more than the local government. That only means disturbing the peace, and the politics that goes with it.

Change is confrontational, no matter how smooth the transition is. But people, as in the case of San Francisco, don't want to step out of their respective comfort zones. That's a nightmare compared to a more domestic concern like trespassing or vote-buying. The town might even be experiencing a prolonged culture shock if and when it grows into a city. So let the quivering quiver some more, let’s get busy, anything but the disintegration of the old order.

Otherwise, that would mean an unnecessary development, and when that happens, a lot of things are at stake. A lot. That’s probably why many of the residents feel the need to zipper their mouths even if the quivering is slowly distorting their daily routine. Brownouts are less head-scratching than a citywide implementation of law and order, or the wearing of helmets, or driving without license. Brownouts are easy. It keeps you from being informed, from being knowledgeable, from being cognizant to the issues around you, especially in this age of WiFis and pay-per-views, a subtle way of isolating the entire town from those who probably knew the world well.

Last Sunday, there was a brownout in San Francisco, from 6am to 6pm. Like a security guard on a graveyard shift, the waiting seemed like an eternity. Not to mention the effect of such a global warming when all you could do is simply bear the unbearable and control the uncontrollable, and there's no fan or an air-conditioning unit to contain the whole thing, plus the agony of not being able to monitor the news about that typhoon, those missing relatives, and the news of an incoming weather. All these played out just as this brownout takes its course.

Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla somehow has this to say about the need of such an electricity, “The first sign of hope kung tutuusin parati is always electricity so iyon ang siskapin natin,” he said, following his department's relief efforts in those typhoon-hit areas in Central Visayas.

But not a glimmer of hope in here. Doing an “Annual Preventive Maintenance Servicing” and yet offering the same old fluctuation, the same old quivering, the same old darkness, year in, year out, is more or less insulting to the intelligence, a kind of phoniness that keeps on growing like a park into a plaza. Either they don't know how to sustain it, or simply doing what they’re supposed to do since day one, making a capital out of a hopeless situation.