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Thursday, February 23, 2006
Officials knew landslide-hit village was a disaster waiting to happen (11:58 a.m.)
MANILA -- Philippine experts knew that the farming village of Guinsaugon sat atop a major earthquake fault and were planning to issue a warning when a landslide wiped it off the map, officials say.
Drenched by two weeks of unusually heavy rains, a huge chunk of Mount Kan-abag roared down in an avalanche of mud, water and boulders on Feb. 17, burying nearly all of Guinsaugon's residents alive. No survivors have been found since the first few hours after the disaster on Leyte island.
Rampant illegal logging, harsh weather, unstable terrain and bureaucratic shortcomings have raised concerns that the tragedy could be repeated.
"It was a disaster waiting to happen in some ways," government geologist Malin Tumonong told The Associated Press.
The government has been aware of the danger signs for years.
Leyte, an impoverished mountainous island 670 kilometers (420 miles) southeast of Manila, lies on unstable ground straddling the Philippine Fault, which zigzags along the country from north to south.
"Geologically, it is underlain by volcanic rocks characterized by intense fracturing and weathering, which makes it unstable and susceptible to mass movement," the Department of Environment and Natural Resources said in a statement.
In 2003, government geologists listed 82.6 percent of Leyte as prone to such geological hazards as landslides and listed it as the fifth-most susceptible province.
The Philippine archipelago is located along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a sprawling region where earthquakes and volcanic activity are common. All of the country's mountainous regions are landslide prone, Tumonong said.
"Our tectonic setting is ripe for many geological hazards like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flooding and landslides," she said.
A national "geo-hazard map" showing landslide-prone regions has been around for years, but it's not detailed enough to indicate which towns face danger. Last year, Philippine officials started a three-year program to create a more detailed map.
In January, regional geologists decided to include St. Bernard town, which has 30 villages including Guinsaugon, as among the areas to be surveyed this year for the new map because of the high possibility of landslides and other hazards.
"Unfortunately, the landslide struck before the plan got under way," Tumonong said.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered the release of 80 million pesos (US$1.5 million; euro1.3 million) Monday to speed up the development of new maps.
St. Bernard Mayor Maria Lim says she's been told of the fault that runs deep underneath but did not think it triggered the monstrous landslide, which many believe was caused by two weeks of torrential rains blamed on the La Nina weather phenomenon.
"They said we are in a fault line, but that's for earthquakes," Lim said. "The truth is we did not know that the landslide would hit. Nobody knew," she said.
Disasters are not new to Leyte.
A flash flood swept down from the hills into Ormoc city on the western side of the island in November 1991, killing about 6,000. A landslide in San Francisco, in southern Leyte in December 2003, killed 133. Seven road workers died in a landslide in Sogod town five days before nearby Guinsaugon's tragedy.
Environmentalists, led by Greenpeace, have accused the government of failing to do enough to prevent the disaster by refusing to enforce a nationwide logging ban and putting measures in place to protect communities like Guinsaugon from flash floods or landslides.
"If the government were serious to begin with, we could have avoided a repeat of this type of disaster," said Von Hernandez, campaign director for Greenpeace Southeast Asia.
Hernandez suggested that widespread logging - which can leave unstable earth - contributed to the disaster, but other conservationists have discounted that, given the size of the landslide and the heavy rains that preceded it.
"It's unlikely that any past deforestation - legal or illegal - has really played a significant role in causing that landslide," Patrick Durst, senior forestry officer with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said by telephone from India.
"There really is not much debate over whether tree cover could have held it in place. From what we know about the rainfall, it's quite clear what happened," he said.
Rather than focusing on logging bans or reforestation campaigns, the government should be looking at how to better identify hazardous areas and move endangered communities, Durst said.
But in poor countries like the Philippines, forcing people to move from their land isn't easy.
Many poor villagers living on or near mountains say they have nowhere to go and would lose their livelihood. When geologists warned that villages near Guinsaugon were in danger of landslides, Lim ordered them cleared of people but some refused to go.
"I had to call in the army," Lim said.
Now just a muddy wasteland studded with boulders, Guinsaugon should be turned into a cemetery or a memorial to remind others of the tragic cost of living in a hazardous zone, she said. |
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