Southern Leyte landslide: repeat of past errors?

The landslide that struck the Southern Leyte town of St. Bernard on Friday is reminiscent of the country’s most tragic landslides recorded in the last 15 years. Two of these tragedies also happened in Southern Leyte, Region 8. On November 1991, around 5,000 people were killed and 30,000 rendered homeless when a flashflood hit the province’s Ormoc town. On December 2003, around 150 died from landslides due to heavy rains in the towns of San Francisco, Liloan and San Ricardo. These were blamed on excessive logging by commercial firms, mostly owned by politicians and businessmen in the province. Several government officials and environmental activists have been advocating for total log ban, which to this day has fallen on deaf ears. Week-long rains have caused the latest landslide, killing six people as of posting time. Rescuers, however, fear that the death toll would rise since mud and rocks, described by witnesses as bigger than the houses, covered over 300 houses and a school in barangay (village) Guinsaugon. Landslides were also recorded in the Southern Leyte towns of San Ricardo, San Francisco, Liloan and Sogod last week due to heavy rains, displacing more than 4,000 families. Seven people have been killed in the village of Kahupian in Sogod town. Landslides happen when rocks, earth or debris move down a slope. Heavy rains, earthquakes or volcanic eruption often cause these mudslides. Not less than 20 typhoons batter the Philippines yearly. Due to rapid forest denudation, the country had experienced six rain-induced landslides for the past 15 years, which claimed more than 6,000 lives. Apart from the 1991 and 2003 Southern Leyte landslides, other recorded rain-induced landslides were: • August 3, 1999 landslide that killed 58 people in Cherry Hills Subdivision, Antipolo City; • July 10, 2000 landslide at the dump in Payatas, Quezon City that killed more than 500 people; • November 9, 2001 landslide in Mahinog, Camiguin that killed 350 people; and • December 2004 landslides in Infanta, Real and other nearby towns in the province of Quezon, leaving more than 1,300 dead.