Well, one more leaf is off the history’s journey. The year 2023 is gone and 2024 is three days old. In Davao City many things happened in the immediate past year. There were serious crimes that put the city on the national map. And there were also a few, yet disastrous natural phenomena that hit the city, the latest of which was the fire that razed a thickly populated area in Agdao district during the last week of 2023.
A month before the fire there were earthquakes that shook Davao City causing damage to some buildings although slight. But the temblor led to the suspension of classes because the city’s building authorities have to order a thorough assessment of structures to ensure that the earthquakes did not have serious effects on the buildings’ integrity.
Some residential and office condominiums have to be temporarily vacated to give way to inspectors if only to give assurance to occupants that their government and building administrators really care for their safety.
A few weeks before the earthquakes there were flood incidences in the city’s low-lying areas such as roads and highways the most prominent of which is the portion of the C. Garcia Diversion road leading to the Davao International Airport. The inundation of that portion of the highway caused an almost entire night of vehicular traffic both going north and south of the city.
The latest and perhaps the most devastating to hit Davao City in 2023 was the one that submerged barangays Bago Aplaya, Bago Oshiro and surrounding communities. That flood during the middle of the fourth quarter of 2023 brought damage to several houses and vehicles of residents in subdivisions located in that northern part of the city.
In fact we could not imagine how the victims of that disaster celebrated their holiday season when many of them lost their belongings and even have to have their houses rebuilt and refurbished after these were destroyed by the raging flood water.
Also, during the second quarter of the immediate past year one of the most heinous of crimes was committed in Calinan, Davao City. And it had as victim a clueless lady architect who was abducted, raped and killed by the perpetrators. Her body was dumped in a shallow canal of a banana plantation a few kilometers away from the house of her parents.
Her abduction, rape and killing even bred a series of crimes. This was the picking up of alleged suspects of the lady architect’s slay and the succeeding torture and eventual death of one. Another suspect was “gone with the wind” and remained unaccounted until now. Another suspect was picked up and jailed but his arrest was supposedly done as a drug buy-bust.
Also in 2023 there was an explosives blast that hit a parked car of a lawyer somewhere in Ecoland Subdivision not far from the vehicle owner’s law firm. The incident made a repeat of the usual police action on such kind of crime – the creation of yet another Special Investigating TasK Group (SITG) to conduct a probe focused on certain particular crime incident. But so far the law enforcement authorities have yet to give the public an update of the SITG probe on that particular incident.
Now we are on the third day of 2024 and we have no doubt the people, specifically the residents of Davao City, are hoping for the best to happen during the year.
But even as the eve of the new year was greeted with merry-making among residents sans the traditional noise of firecrackers and related minute explosives, still the people are hopeful for more positive expectations in the current year.
Of course nobody can guess what exactly are in store for the year insofar as nature is concerned. Anything can happen in the universe. But as to the people’s lives everyone has the better control of how to make things happen in their personal lives.
As the saying goes, “life is what people make of it.” But as always, everyone is hoping for the best in the remaining 362 days of the year 2024.
