STO. TOMAS-There’s just another week left to complete the final preparations for the town’s bid to make it to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Next Sunday, February 10, the town’s government and residents will attempt to make it to the Guinness’ pages with their planned 4,938-meter long corn barbecue grill.

Coinciding with the town’s centennial founding anniversary and first Corn Festival, the feat is an initiative of Mayor Vivien Villar, who is also the executive chairperson of the Centennial Celebration.

“This is a big challenge to the whole town,” Villar said.

She is confident that the full support of the town’s populace will not fail them.

Sto. Tomas, an agricultural town producing mainly the white-variety of corn and rice, is located in the southern part of the province near the Agno River.

“With all of us working for a common goal, we can not fail,” Villar said.

The corn barbecue grill (2,024 grill units) will extend through all 10 barangays of the town, namely Salvacion, San Agustin, Poblacion East, Poblacion West, Laluna, Sto. Domingo, Sto. Niño and San Antonio.

“We are excited, a little bit nervous and exhausted after months of preparation,” said Vice Mayor Timoteo Villar, executive vice chairperson of the celebration and chairman of the Corn Barbecue Event.

Rep. Mark Cojuangco of the fifth district of Pangasinan and the wife of Urdaneta City Mayor Amadeo Perez Jr. had been invited to light the grill units that will set off the barbecue.

For this attempt, a total of 121,444 ears harvested from six hectares of corn fields, will all to be laid out and cooked in embers of charcoal at one time.

He added 800 sacks of charcoal from Burgos town and 1,050 liters of kerosene will be used.

The grills will be manned by more than 7,000 grillers while more than 1,000 marshals and 100 uniformed policemen will be deployed to control an expected crowd of 100,000 and maintain peace and order.

“We invited people from the neighboring town because we can not consume all the 300,000 barbecued corn earns,” said the vice mayor.

Planted in the town is the hybrid glutinous variety of corn, which is capable of producing as much as 50,000 ears per hectare and could be harvested 60 days after planting, said Municipal Agriculturist Cris Balila.

A helicopter will fly over the whole stretch for an hour to document the whole activity. —LM

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