ITOGON Mayor Victorio Palangdan still hopes for a miracle.
The chief executive refuses to lose hope that survivors may still be found attributing the mercy of God cannot be discounted in the tragedy that befell his town.
“May mga makita na mga animals na buhay, (There were animals found alive) there is hope,” said Palangdan.
Recovery teams now reached over 1,000 who keep shoveling out soil on site in a bid to recover survivors.
A helpdesk from Ifugao was established at the site led by Governor Pedro Mayamo, who patiently waits with the group from the province for news of the living and confirmation of the dead.
A large number of miners trapped on site are from Ifugao, who left their homes to find greener pastures in mining, leaving their farmlands in the hope for a better life.
Emilio Bagulon Sr. waits at the holding area where relatives sit and hope their loved ones will come out alive.
Bagulon Sr. has two sons, Emilio and Armando who are trapped in the rubble with his hope not waning despite the slow recovery of bodies and slimmer chances of survival.
The father said he knows chances are low and at the least, he would hope to bring home the bodies of both his sons.
Major General Ruben Carandang of the Office of Civil Defense-Cordillera Administrative Region devised a way to bring down onsite a backhoe, making rescue and retrieval easier with efforts to go on relentlessly for a month.
The Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) headed by Chief inspector Mariano Tagiam was assigned to the top of the landslide site and is tasked to pull retrieved bodies and ferry them to the command post for the SOCO and NBI team to process.
The BFP is composed of a 32 member team of trained respondents, the same group deployed at Bohol and Tacloban when Typhoon Yolanda struck.
The team uses the low angle, single suspension with rescue assist and the two point suspension rescue with stretcher method to pull up retrieved bodies from a 300-meter ravine.
Aside from Palangdan, government agencies are also holding on to a promise made by President Rodrigo Duterte that all the missing will be retrieved.
“He told us and the families that all will be recovered,” Palangdan added.