31 hurt, 20 trapped under mud among 48 missing at mining town
At least seven people were killed and 31 injured when a rain-induced landslide hit a gold-mining village in Davao de Oro, officials said Wednesday.
A total of 48 people were reported missing, provincial disaster official Edward Macapili said.
The landslide Tuesday night struck Masara town, destroying houses and engulfing three buses and a jeepney waiting for mine workers.
Rescuers were digging through mud to reach at least 20 people trapped inside the vehicles, Macapili said.
At least 28 people were on board three 60-seater buses and a 36-person-capacity jeepney when the landslide hit, but eight managed to escape unhurt through the windows before the mud engulfed them, he said.
A fourth bus had left before the mud swamped the area, the firm said, adding that 62 employees were safe while 45 were missing.
President Marcos, who conducted an aerial inspection of the flood and landslide-stricken area on Wednesday, ordered the release of P265 million for the victims, including the 21 fatalities due to floods and earlier landslides in Davao region.
“I released P265 million to make sure that the pace of the response is immediate and felt by people. They have to receive help right away and have resources for their daily needs,” Mr. Marcos said during a situation briefing in Davao City.
“I think that we are doing all right in the food— the provision of food packs, among others. But it gets to the point that food is not the only thing people need. They need to buy other things for their household. That’s why the ECTs (emergency cash transfer) have become very important,” the President said.
Mr. Marcos also directed government agencies to ensure that all infrastructure projects are climate-resilient.
‘’There is another instruction to all agencies that I need to have fully complied with, of which the recent flooding in Mindanao has emphatically shown. The infrastructure we are building must not only wipe out arrears of the past, but must respond to the needs of the present, and anticipate circumstances in the future,’’ he said.
“We must build while bearing in mind the worst the future will bring,
of the earth getting hotter, getting wetter, and not on outdated assumptions that no longer apply.’’
Landslides are frequent hazards across much of the archipelago nation owing to the mountainous terrain, heavy rainfall and widespread deforestation from mining, slash-and-burn farming and illegal logging.
Science and Technology Secretary Renato Solidum said a number of huge earthquakes had destabilized the region in recent months.
“Every time there’s a major earthquake we have to worry about multiple landslides every time the rains come,” Solidum told the disaster briefing attended by President Marcos.
Davao de Oro Gov. Dorothy Montejo Gonzaga presented a preliminary report during the briefing, indicating an initial total of over P3.6 billion in damages to local and national roads, bridges, and flood control infrastructure in the province.
Gonzaga outlined the budgetary requirements for the repair and rehabilitation of these infrastructures, amounting to P8.2 billion — P2.181 billion for roads, P2.138 billion for bridges, and P3.889 billion for revetments.
Out of the 237 barangays in the province, 138 were impacted by the shear line, while 151 were affected by the low-pressure area, the governor added.
The province endured substantial damage from the rains associated with the shear line weather pattern, affecting approximately 37,692 families and causing damage worth P122.50 million to the agriculture sector, impacting 6,285 farmers, she said.
An aerial video showed a deep, brown gouge down the side of a forested mountain in Davao de Oro that reached the village below where a number of houses had been destroyed.
Rescue teams from across the region have been deployed to help search the large area under mud, Macapili said.
The buses that had been outside a gold mine operated by the Philippine company Apex Mining in Masara village where workers are dropped off and picked up.
“We have equipment but we’re mostly doing it manually because digging with backhoes is dangerous as you don’t know if there are people trapped beneath the debris,” Macapili said.
Among the 31 villagers injured in the landslide, two were seriously hurt and were airlifted to a hospital in Davao city for treatment, he said.
The landslide appeared to have caught people by surprise.
“There was no sign that a landslide would occur because the rains stopped on Thursday and by Friday it was already sunny and hot,” Macapili said.
Macapili said an earthquake shook the village shortly after the landslide. The search effort was halted at midnight because it was too hazardous to continue, but resumed at daylight, he said.
He said there was a mining tunnel beneath the mountain, but he did not know if it had been damaged by the landslide.
In a statement to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Apex Mining said it had reduced operations as it assists the rescue effort with equipment, personnel and food.
Meanwhile, hundreds of families from Masara and four nearby villages have been forced to evacuate from their homes and shelter in emergency centers.
Rain has pounded parts of Mindanao off and on for weeks, forcing tens of thousands into shelters. With AFP