QUEZON, Bukidnon (MindaNews 21 October) – Traveling 114 kilometers from Davao City to Barangay Palacapao, felt like going back to the time of the COVID-19 pandemic: desolate.

Barangay Palacapao is where a portion of the Bukidnon-Davao highway collapsed Saturday night, October 18,  and disrupted economic activities along this vital link between northern and southern Mindanao.

There were too few vehicles cruising the highway.

Unlike the pandemic, however, stores, shops, eateries, stalls selling vegetables, flowers and ornamental plants were still open on Monday, usually a very busy day for commuters from the Davao and Northern Mindanao regions. But the passengers of commercial buses and private vehicles — their main source of earnings — were few and far between. 

How many of these establishments will remain open and how many will close will depend on how soon the road is repaired or a detour passage nearby is constructed.

MindaNews asked the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) on the estimated economic losses daily from the closure of the highway that links the cities of Davao in the Davao region with the Northern Mindanao cities of Valencia and Malaybalay in Bukidnon, and Cagayan de Oro City.

MinDA’s Deputy Executive Director Romeo Montenegro told MindaNews on Tuesday morning that there is an “ongoing gathering of data and obtaining info from mainly affected businesses, e.g. transport and logistics.”

In Buda, Joy, Inday and Kimar, who have been selling vegetables along the highway for years now, are reeling from the impact of the road closure.

Inday, who has been selling vegetables for 14 years now, says she earned only 300 pesos on Sunday, the day after the road collapse. Joy, who has been selling vegetables for seven years now, says on ordinary days – referring to pre-road closure days – she earns 2,000 pesos gross but on Sunday she earned only half of that amount, less 200 pesos for rent and less yet money for food.

Kimar Toralba, 25, says his family has been selling vegetables along the highway even before he was born. Like Inday and Joy, Kimar says their losses are not only from fewer customers last Sunday and Monday but also from the fact that they will have to throw away the vegetable supplies that easily rot, like tomatoes.

For the longer-lasting vegetables, they think they should just go hawking or sell them house-to-house.

With the loss of customers, it is not only the vegetable vendors who suffer but also the farmers from where they get their supply.

“Dawat-dawat”

The Rural Transit Mindanao, Inc. (RTMI), whose red and white buses service the Davao-Cagayan de Oro route, are still operating but on a pass on basis.  This means each passenger bound for either Cagayan de Oro or Davao would have to disembark, retrieve his/her luggage, and then walk to a waiting bus on the other side of the collapsed road.

Passengers from Davao City disembark at Barangay Palacapao here and walk downhill on a steep trail while those from Cagayan de Oro have to walk uphill on the same trail to transfer to the waiting buses.

Edgar Reglo, RTMI dispatcher at the Davao City Overland Transport Terminal, told MindaNews in a telephone interview Tuesday that before the road closure, the company usually deploys from 55 to 65 buses a day bound for Cagayan de Oro.

But with the closure, only around 20 are deployed and only up to Barangay Palacapao here. The RTMI in Cagayan de Oro is also deploying buses from there.

Before the closure, buses from Davao City to Cagayan de Oro leave at 20-to-30- minute intervals especially during busy days, and hourly at night. With the road closure, the intervals are longer.

Fare for three-stop buses from Davao to Cagayan costs 875 pesos while the five- stop buses charge 715 pesos. Passengers from Davao pay 270 pesos until Palacapao and will pay another P450 to complete the trip to Cagayan de Oro from Palacapao.

MindaNews saw at least eight Davao-bound buses parked along the highway in Palacapao shortly before noon on Monday, waiting for passengers from the other side of the highway to transport to Davao City.

Alternate routes for light vehicles have been identified such as the route from Cagayan de Oro to Davao City via Valencia., Bukidnon to Talaingod in Davao del Norte or via Maramag, Bukidnon to Matalam in North Cotabato to Marilog in Davao City but these routes are longer and cost more.

For all types of vehicles especially those which transport goods – food, cement and other materials – traveling from Cagayan to Davao means going through Butuan in Agusan del Norte which is circuitous and takes 447 kilometers compared with only 278 kilometers via the Bukidnon-Davao highway.

Another route is via Maramag, Bukidnon to Carmen and Kabacan in North Cotabato .

Gainers

While the road closure is bad for business, it has opened income opportunities for residents in the barangay.

Two newly-opened trails have been opened by residents, leading downhill to the highway to get passengers to the other side – one for motorcycles, the other for individual passengers.

Assisting the passengers and motorcycle riders has become a brisk business here.

Elmer Gersamio, 31, who works for a supplier of vegetables from Bukidnon to Bankerohan Public Market in Davao City, has been working since Saturday evening with colleagues, helping motorcycle owners and passengers go up or down the trails.

Motorcycle drivers who are not familiar with the terrain ask them to drive the motorcycle either downhill or uphill, or they assist in pushing the vehicle up or down. They also become porters to bus passengers with heavy bags.

Gersamio said they leave it to the passengers or the motorcycle riders to decide how much to give them. It is not an easy task navigating the dangerous, steep trails on motorcycle or carrying heavy load. He said the barangay chairperson has advised them to let the customers decide. Usually, he said, passengers and motorcycle riders pay them from 50 to 100 pesos for services rendered.

On Sunday, Gersamio said, he earned 1,500 pesos but “hago kaayo” (it was very difficult).

But what about those who need assistance but have no money to shell out?

Gersamio said they also provide free services especially for persons with disabilities.

“Mutabang man gihapon mi” (We still help), he said.

Other gainers from the road closure are the owners of two eateries with a vantage view of the zigzag road where the landslide occurred.

Authorities have blocked entry to Quezon town starting from Kilometer 91 from Davao City. That’s a 23-kilometer stretch to Palacapao’s Kilometer 114. But hundreds of persons flocked to Palacapao here on Monday, from the Davao side and even from the Cagayan de Or side because Secretary Vince Dizon of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), was scheduled to visit.

The visit was reset.

But DPWH officials and employees as well as elements from the Philippine National Police, passengers and the media, flocked to the area on Monday. By lunchtime, there was hardly any viand left in the eatery so they had to cook again.

It was the same for the snack house beside it, whose owner recalls that when the road collapsed shortly before 8 p.m., they initially thought it was a truck that crashed but it sounded “murag gubat” (like war). When she looked down from the window, the white railing of the highway was gone. And so was the lane beside it.

Ely and wife Thelma Ubatay, who survived a landslide in Kitaotao, Bukidnon in October last year (three family members were killed), have remained missing.

They were riding their tricycle or, “bao-bao” as the vehicles are commonly known, when the road collapsed. The “bao- bao” was found the next day.

Business was also brisk for the use of the clean comfort rooms at 10 pesos for women and the same price for men. (Carolyn O. Arguillas with reports from Manman Dejeto, Gregorio Bueno and Keziah Manulat / MindaNews)