ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines, 20 February 2006 — Another landslide killed five people in the Philippines barely two days after a collapsed mountainside wiped out an entire community in the central island of Leyte, officials said yesterday.
The second landslide hit the gold-rush community of Dipore in the southern town of Bayog, Zamboanga del Sur province, about 850 kilometers south of Manila, said the military and police.
The remote town’s mayor, Mary Ann Cartalla, also told local radio stations that small-scale mining financier Eric Sumundong perished with his two sisters and two other laborers in the landslide that buried three houses at about 7.30 p.m. on Saturday.
Though minor compared to the mudslide that buried the village of Guinsaugon on Leyte on Friday, Zamboanga’s landslide confirmed warnings by scientists that many communities in the Philippines are sitting on sites considered geological hazards.
A report by the Philippine Daily Inquirer yesterday, quoting a senior geologist of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, said at least 48 towns in the eastern region of Bicol alone have been found to be highly prone to landslides and flooding.
All these towns, along with Leyte island, are located on the edge of the highly unstable undersea Philippine Trench and are “prone to weathering and erosion,” the bureau said.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has also warned that the Philippines could face more landslides amid forecasts of further heavy rains and promised to help threatened areas adopt safety precautions.
Eleven communities near Guinsaugon, the village in Southern Leyte province that was obliterated in Friday’s mudslides, have been evacuated.
Rescuers yesterday picked through a sea of mud in a vain search for survivors among some 1,400 Guinsaugon villagers who were still missing.
A 50-strong contingent of US Marines from Japan, plus 30 rescuers from Taiwan and 72 from Malaysia, joined local residents and Filipino soldiers at the scene yesterday, part of an international outpouring of aid and sympathy for the disaster-prone nation.
Arroyo held hope that more survivors would be found.
The National Disaster Coordinating Council said 72 bodies had been recovered, 20 people were rescued injured from the scene and 410 people who were away from the village at the time also survived.
About 1,400 remain missing based on the latest population estimate for Guinsaugon, although some local officials put the figure much higher.
The bodies of 29 unidentified victims were to be buried in a mass grave yesterday for health reasons. Some lay in crude plywood coffins or body bags after the nearby town of St. Bernard ran out of proper coffins.
But local officials were less optimistic. “I don’t think we can find anybody alive,” said Felix Lim, vice mayor of St. Bernard town, which includes Guinsaugon.
“The mud is just too deep,” he said. “That’s the hard truth we have to face.”
Health Department official Cornelio Solis, asked by AFP if anyone could have survived, said: “By this time I don’t think so. There is no way they could survive this by now.
“I have been to ground zero, and there is water and mud seeping through.”
Rescue efforts were focused on the presumed site of the elementary school and the village hall, but progress was slow.
The head of the rescue effort, Maj. Gen. Bonifacio Ramos, said the soft mud made it impossible to get heavy equipment onto the site, where an entire school with 200 students and 40 teachers was among buildings buried.
“The mud is like quicksand,” Ramos said. “We can’t move very fast and it’s very difficult.” In some places the soil was said to be 30 meters (100 feet) thick.
“We need special drilling equipment to detect if there is still sign of life underneath,” he said.
After two weeks of abnormally heavy rain, the mountainside collapsed onto the village in the central island of Leyte on Friday morning, covering an area of nine square kilometers (3.5 square miles) with mud and huge boulders.
— With input from agencies
