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Monday, February 20, 2006
Vice mayor wants Leyte landslide survivors relocated
GUINSAUGON, Southern Leyte -- Mayor Lim of St. Bernard, Southern Leyte is not thinking of future plans for Barangay Guinsaugon just as yet.
But for sure, Lim said, they would have to take into consideration the wishes of the families of the people buried in the landslide.
For now, their minds are still focused on finding the school and other structures, hoping to find survivors, or bodies.
In a separate interview, Vice Mayor Felix Lim said he will suggest in a meeting Monday the permanent relocation of survivors. The site of what used to be Barangay Guinsaugon will instead be reforested, he said.
Governor Rosette Lerias, meanwhile, said she ordered the police and the army to "bodily bring" residents out of the barangays near the mountains.
Venerando Gamana, a 58-year-old resident of a barangay near Guinsaugan, said they would have resisted evacuation had see not seen that a portion of a mountain near his property has also started to crack.
What's most difficult, he said, is leaving their homes and their livelihood behind only to stay in the already cramped evacuation centers in Poblacion, doing nothing, not even knowing when these would end.
Weary search teams recovered Sunday another 14 bodies from Guinsaugon, a farming village where up to 1,800 people died when they were buried in mud up to 30 feet deep last Friday.
Secretary Eduardo Ermita said Sunday he has given the inter-agency task force that is investigating the St. Bernard landslide one week to submit its report on the tragedy.
The task force includes the secretaries of the environment, interior, social welfare, health and defense departments.
Ermita said the investigation includes information that the environment department had warned local officials that the province's 18 towns and four cities are susceptible to landslides, based on geo-hazard mapping. The information reportedly did not reach the residents.
Presidential Chief of Staff Michael Defensor, after a close-door meeting with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and disaster officials in Camp Aguinaldo, said government resources should focus on relief and rescue operations.
Defensor said government is setting up operation centers in the cities of Cebu and Tacloban to accommodate international assistance.
Aside from 30 US Marines and local volunteers, a Taiwanese team of 32 rescue workers with heat-sensing equipment arrived in Guinsaugon to help in the search for survivors.
Rescue workers treaded carefully to avoid becoming casualties themselves as the uneasy mud settled.
A no-fly zone was established over the disaster area out of fears that powerful downwind from helicopters could dislodge the mud.
Volunteers with two sniffing dogs dug around a mud-covered elementary school but found no signs that any of the 250-300 children and teachers inside were still alive two days after a massive landslide.
Rescue workers shouted and banged on boulders with stones in hopes that survivors would hear. There was only silence.
Survivors and relatives of the missing had trouble figuring out where houses once stood. The area has been drenched by 68 centimeters (27 inches) of rain over the last two weeks.
"Sige pag lihok ang yuta, unya naa kunoy low pressure area (The ground continues to move, and there's also a low pressure area)," Mayor Lim said.
The hunt for survivors focused on the school, after unconfirmed reports circulated that some of those inside sent text messages to loved ones after an adjacent mountain collapsed following two weeks of heavy rains.
Two shiploads of US Marines, diverted from joint military exercises elsewhere in the Philippines, arrived Sunday. In combat pants and shirts, they hopped onto a bulldozer that carried them across a shallow stream and to the 40-hectare stretch of mud that covered the farming village of Guinsaugon after part of an adjacent mountain collapsed Friday.
The Marines had hoped to work through the night, but found their flashlights weren't enough to cut through the gloom. By the end of the day, about 200 Marines were on the ground, with hundreds more expected to come ashore Monday.
Spirits rose briefly earlier when Malaysian forces, using special sound-detecting gear, reported movement below the mud that was 10 meters deep in places. But with nothing else to indicate life below the surface, they had to admit that the noise could have been the unstable mud settling.
Volunteers with two sniffer dogs also dug around the school and again got excited when the dogs smelled something, but their digging too was fruitless.
The confirmed death toll was 72, but hopes of finding survivors were fading quickly.
Officials decided they had to do something with the growing number of bodies that were quickly starting to decompose in the tropical conditions with no one to claim them.
Under a light drizzle, a Roman Catholic priest sprinkled holy water on the bodies, some wrapped in bags, others in cheap wooden coffins, then said a prayer through the mask he wore to filter out the stench. Volunteers lowered the bodies to men who placed them side by side at the bottom of the grave.
Another mass burial for 20 bodies was planned for Monday.
Officials said 57 people were plucked alive from the mud Friday, but on Sunday lowered the figure to 20. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.
Philippine Lieutenant Colonel Raul Farnacio said rescue teams using police search dogs also were digging around the village hall, where about 300 people had been attending a women's conference.
Vice Mayor Lim said he will suggest in Monday's meeting that Guinsaugon should remain uninhabited, and survivors should get a relocation site instead.
He said the barangay is no longer safe for residents because there's a chance of another landslide in the area.
Also, he believes that not all the bodies can be retrieved, and the decomposing bodies can cause diseases among residents who insist on returning to the area.
President Arroyo said in Manila that "all the efforts of our government continue and will not stop while there is hope to find survivors."
"The nation is grateful for the continued prayers and concern, help from our world allies."
Referring to residents' claims that illegal logging contributed to the tragedy, Arroyo said: "Let us link arms to preserve our environment and protect what remains of it for our next generation."
In Geneva, the International Red Cross appealed for 2 million Swiss francs (US$1.5 million; euro1.3 million) to buy temporary shelter materials and other emergency health and cooking items.
Many residents of the Guinsaugon were evacuated last week because of the threat of landslides or flooding following heavy rains, but had started returning home when the days turned sunny.
In November 1991, about 6,000 people were killed in Ormoc City in floods and landslides triggered by a tropical storm. Another 133 people died in floods and mudslides in Southern Leyte in December 2003. (JPM/DRT of Superbalita/AP/Sunnex)
(February 20, 2006 issue)
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