WE the People on the Kagman Peninsula are hanging by a thread when it comes to a natural disaster.
History has taught us that Governments often fail in their fiduciary duty to protect people even when they are WARNED of impending dangers. Maui Officials were WARNED about their inadequate Emergency Response System for the people and true to history their system failed to warn the people with 80 dead and anticipating more. We can’t ignore the oversight of NO alternate exit like in buildings and we can’t depend on Facebook to warn everyone. We only have one siren at MHS when we need sirens all over the island with only one road out of Kagman. I’m hoping & praying the failure in Maui’s Warning System for Evacuation failure will put our leaders on notice to DO-SOMETHING before it’s too-darn-late. I have periodically written about the need for an alternate route out of Kagman for nearly two decades and the Maui fires reminded me of how important this matter is FOR the People of Kagman. Instead of working to make Ambrose look bad, our leaders need to be adults — man/woman enough to admit Ambrose is RIGHT and try to get it done, as this will surely be another “I Told You So” even if I’m dead and gone when it happens, just like the many other I Told You So’s that have already proved Ambrose was RIGHT!
I’m sure the Feds would rather complete an “alternate evacuation route from the Kagman Peninsula” rather than sending millions in relief after people have died because they couldn’t get off the peninsular. Our first warning took place over a decade ago when a power-pole was fell down on the hill entering Kagman blocking the only road out of Kagman for several hours. We were just lucky there wasn’t an emergency needing to get someone to the hospital. But we might not be so lucky the next time it happens, which is why it is truly time for our Representatives, Senators & Governor to get busy doing the work to get the Feds to help the CNMI build the all-important alternate route out of Kagman. In fact, the alternate route is already partly done going up to the Juvenile Detention Center but it needs to be completed and made more passable for cars. “Time IS NOT on our side,” it can happen at any TIME!
Ever since my warnings about the Garment Industry leaving in 2005, and no one listened it has been disappointing and frustrating to see our leaders MESS-UP. Now there are many of my students in our government at all levels and I can only pray they haven’t been “contaminated by the biasness and bigotry of the older-ones in our government.”
Don’t let this warning and the deaths of those people on Maui be “in vain,” as this is about the welfare and safety of the people in Kagman, not Ambrose, as I’m just the messenger. So stop trying to kill the messenger and listen to the message.
I just “refuse to give-up on helping the People whom I consider my family too.” I’ve done and tried to do more than some locals to help and even more than most locals have done, and yet I’m “Black-Balled.” I can only pray that ONE-DAY this Black-Ball phenomenon will no longer exist in the CNMI, especially with the vital need for an alternate route off the peninsular before it’s too late! One People One Direction.
AMBROSE M. BENNETT
Kagman, Saipan
