UNDERSTANDING OUR ERA

material assistance in times of crises, calamities and catastrophes - a sorry state and ordeal, if you ask me.

The Philippines is a Third World country long aspiring to reach the status of what our neighbors have achieved in governance.

But we have yet to be united as a people.

Because of the polarizing effects of political disagreements and policy-making, Filipinos don’t really know whether they are moving forward or backward.

They can’t even determnine what system of government is best for the country as myriad efforts to introduce beneficial amendments to the loopholes the 1986 constitution has bred remain a contentious issue that has led to unsettled debate and argumentation.

The Philippines, after gaining indpendence in 1946 arising out of the ruins of the Sec- ond World War, has remained intolerably fractious in many aspects of Philippine social life.

Because hunger and poverty have been haunting and hounding us for decades, should not the government then - as elementary as it it (as Sherlock Holmes use to tell his pal Dr. Watson) - focus its efforts toward attaining suffiency in food security ahead of the other concerns?

Everybody works first for food on the table, right?

Even if one earns monery and has income to buy food but there is inadequate supply and the prices of commodities are soaring, how can a family survive?

These are hard times.

This is happening in many parts of the world - in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, elsewhere in Africa, Eastern Europe, South America and in Asia.

At the risk of blabbering our explanations, unlike the many countries who are suffering a lack, the Philippines has so much arable lands, extensive marine, oil and mining resources to get its work done.

Praise the Pinoys for their innate resiliency because they continue to endure the lack of jobs and income opportunities by resourcefully finding work overseas as a temporary though palliative solution.

(Perhaps we can attribute this quality and virtue to the centuries of slave-like and robotic subjugation under Spain, the US and Japan.)

So I pop this query: Do Pinoys, as a people, understand the situation the country and government are in today?

Indeed, as Plato warns us, education must equip us to achieve our collective ends or forever “walk lame to the end of his life”. (Email feedback to fredlumba@yahoo.com.) GOD BLESS THE PHILIPPINES!

The elevation of Davao into a city during the Commonwealth greatly increased the activi-ties at Santa Ana wharf whose premises and adjacent areas hosted the biggest number of warehouses anywhere in the region, mainly hemp bodegas stacked with abaca for export.

On April 26, 1938, a fire that struck at 5:30 PM destroyed the International Harvester Company (IHC) warehouse though its true cause was unclear. Over 15.000 bales of abaca were burned and damage reached P360,000, including the value of machinery and equipment incinerated.

Davao City mayor Santiago Artiaga immediately wired Elpidio R. Quirino, the interior secretary, on the status of the incident, telling him that no relief was needed momen- tarily.

The initial inquiry conducted by the Philippine Army and the Davao City police indicated the accident could have been caused by a faulty electrical installation or intentionally started by a laborer. Witnesses said the flames commenced from the upper floor of the building, while others claimed it started in the bodega which was at the time already closed.

It was, according to the accounts of the day, one of the biggest to hit the city in decades.

The Tribune, national broadsheet, reported a day later: “BLAZE SWEEPS DAVAO PIER.”

“Hundreds of thousands of pesos went up in smoke late yesterday afternoon when a fire of unknown origin broke out in the Dort area of Davao, Davao, occupied by large ware-houses of leading Manila business houses.

“The bodega of the International Harvester Company of the Philippines, one of the larg-est in the district, was razed to the ground. Reports of the conflagration were received by the main office here of the company and the bureau of posts.

“The Pacific Commercial Company bodega, which is nearest to the Internation-al Harvester warehouse, and those of Hanson. Orth and Stevenson, incorporated, the Mitsui

“Bussan Kaisha, Columbia Rope, and the bureau of public works, were threatened by the flames at 7 o’clock last night, when the last word was received by the bureau of posts from the Davao postmaster.

“Strong winds blowing at

7:30 last night aided the rapid spread of the flames. The Davao City fire fighting apparatus purchased since the inauguration of Mayor Santiago Artiaga as put to a rigid test. “Policemen performing the extra work of foremen battled to combat flames.”

Two and a half years later, another big fire hit the port area, this time burning the bodega of Hanson, Orth and Stevenson, Inc., a hemp-exporting company, with property damage es-timated at about P200,000.

The fire, which endangered the entire waterfront, was relayed to Manila at 6:30 PM on November 11, 1940, through the postmaster in Davao whose office was around a kilometer away from the port area, stating:

“At 6 p.m. we began evacuating the receiving station in

Santa Ana due to the big fire in the International Harvester bodega which was totally burned now. The adjoining buildings are still in danger due to changes in the course of the strong winds at 7:30 p.m. Our files, rec-ords and cash are safe as well as other articles. Office still safe.”

Fortunately, the incident was shortly placed under control with help from the heavy rain.

F. L. Laurence, vice-president and manager of the firm, who received the report of the fire, said the company’s stock of fiber in the warehouse was not very big.

An account carried by The Tribune, a national broadsheet, reported that abaca worth Pl50,000 in 4,156 bales and in loose fiber was burned, excluding the value of the recently built building.