Safe from firecrackers, Davao sets torotot record instead

(Updated 10:31 a.m.) Davao City residents showed that they could make a lot of New Year's noise without bloodying their hands. 

 

City officials claim they created enough of a racket to set a Guinness World Record. 

 

With firecrackers long banned in the city and strict policing of the streets, Davao has set the Philippine standard for a safe holiday season. But it has also sought to prove that safe doesn't mean boring. 

 

“As of the count before midnight, 7,568 registered and joined the festival,” reported Tourism Assistant Secretary Arturo Boncato, Jr., who joined the first Davao Torotot Festival. 

 

“Torotot” is a Filipino term for a party horn used to make noise to welcome the new year.

 

The number of people who joined the festival was still subject for validation, however. “The audit team is expected to make official announcements in the coming days,” Boncato said.

Japan holds the Guinness World Record for having the largest assembly of party blowers with 6,900 people.

 

However, Davao's figure was short of the 10,000 party blowers expected by event organizers to gather along Roxas Avenue. 

The festival was sponsored by the Davao City government in collaboration with a telecommunications company, which provided free “torotot” for each subscriber participating in the event. The “torotots” given were machine-readable for registration.

 

Since 2002 Davao City has relied on “torotot” to make noise for its New Year revelry. Stiff penalties are imposed on violators of a city ordinance banning the manufacture, sale, distribution, possession or use of firecrackers or pyrotechnic devices.

“(The Torotot Festival) will institutionalize Davao City as a city that believes we do not need firecrackers. We only need to come together and be happy with the New Year that’s coming,” Councilor Leo Avila was quoted as saying.

 

Should the Davao Torotot Festival make it to the Guinness Book of World Records, it will be the second such record for the Davao region.

In 2010, the Monfort Bat Cave in Barangay Tambo, Babak District in the Island Garden City of Samal was listed as having the largest colony of the fruit bat Geoffroy’s Rousette in the world. The 1,000-foot-long cave is home to about 2.4 million bats. —KG/VC, GMA News