Rain-induced slide, road crash leave 3 dead in Agusan, Cotabato
SAN FRANCISCO, AGUSAN DEL SUR—Continuous rains that prevailed in different parts of Mindanao on Sunday triggered a landslide that reportedly buried six persons in Agusan del Sur and a road mishap that killed a village official in Cotabato’s provincial capital.
Rescuers recovered the bodies of a 3-year-old boy and a truck driver on Monday, believed to be among the six people buried by a landslide near a girder bridge at Kilometer 31 in the remote village of Mahayahay in San Luis town in this province around 7 p.m. on Sunday.
The retrieval team composed of the local police, soldiers and personnel from the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office recovered the remains of John Paul Abunda, 3, and truck driver Junard Gonzales.
As of 1 p.m. Monday, rescuers were still searching for the four other missing victims.
Trigger
Mahayahay Barangay Captain Sergio Manlomate said that John Paul was with his grandparents, Helen and Gerry Abunda, who were in the area to gather firewood and make charcoal under the bridge when the landslide struck. The couple remained missing.
Also unaccounted for were another truck driver Elwin Mantibalan and motorcycle driver Macjoe Nuer.
Manlomate told a government-run radio station here that the landslide was triggered when a truck driver tried to pull out a fallen tree to clear the passage to the bridge. It loosened massive amounts of rocks and mud that went cascading down from the mountainside.
Gonzales and Mantibalan were believed to be both driving a “Saddam” truck, an old 6×6 military weapon truck reconditioned to use as transportation to carry workers of logging companies that operated in the hinterlands of San Luis since the 1980s.
According to Manlomate, there were two Saddam trucks in the area at the time of the incident and a motorcycle trailing behind.
Municipal engineer Marlon Aclan told radio station dxGP here that days of continuous rainfall had saturated the soil, making the area prone to slope failure. The affected subvillage of Kilometer 31 is a mountainous community long identified as highly vulnerable to landslides during the rainy season.
Road mishap
Marry-Anne Salayao Garcia, a resident, in a post on social media, also recalled that strong winds and heavy rains had damaged several homes in the same village around this time last year.
In Kidapawan City, Cotabato’s provincial capital, Edgarlito Elardo, 54, chair of the city’s Barangay Paco was driving a motorbike during a heavy downpour when he was hit by another motorcycle in Barangay Paco at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, said Lt. Col. Dominador Palgan Jr., chief of the Kidapawan city police.
Elardo sustained serious head and body injuries and died while undergoing medication in a hospital.
Antonio Failagao, 35, the driver of the other motorbike from Maramag, Bukidnon, surrendered to the police after the accident.
Failagao was among the approximately 30 members of a motorcycle club traveling from General Santos City to Bukidnon, passing by Kidapawan city.
The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration on Monday reported that a low pressure area off Oriental Mindoro and the easterlies would cause scattered rains and thunderstorms in many parts of Luzon and the Visayas. The rest of the country, including Mindanao, would experience thunderstorms that, like in other areas of the nation, could result to landslides and flash floods. —WITH A REPORT FROM EDWIN O. FERNANDEZ
