Landslide death toll rises to 11
MORE bodies have been retrieved from the mud and rubble of a landslide that struck Tuesday night in the mining town of Maco, Davao de Oro province, raising the death toll to 11 as of Thursday afternoon.
In its 4 p.m. update, Davao de Oro’s Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office listed 110 people still missing and feared buried at the landslide site in Barangay Masara. Among them were a mother and her three children.
Earlier in the day, Edward Macapili, the province’s executive assistant on information and communications, said there was conflicting numbers as to the number of missing.
“That’s why we are trying to collaborate our two data so that the two entities or institutions may validate and come up with a uniformed information,” Mr. Macapili said.
Operations have shifted from “search and rescue” to “search and retrieval” due to chances that the missing persons have already died, he added.
So far, 31 people were rescued and reported injured, while 1,166 families in the vicinity of the landslide have been temporarily housed at evacuation centers.
The landslide happened amid a heavy downpour just outside the gold mine site of Apex Mining Co, Inc. Nearly all of the victims are workers of the mining firm as the area serves as a vehicle terminal for buses and jeepneys servicing Apex employees as well as members of the community. The landslide buried two of its service buses carrying workers.
But the area also had shanties and in one of those houses made of semi-permanent materials were the missing mother, Mae Sandulan, and her children Sandrex, 9, Leo, 7, and Princess, 5.
The village, which had a population of 1,125 as of May 2020, was also the site of two landslides in September 2008 that killed 24 people and left two missing. – Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza and John Felix M. Unson