Search operations resumed in Monkayo, Davao De Oro on Saturday, Jan. 20, to find a man who was buried during a deadly landslide that claimed the lives of 10 people, including his entire family.
Franz Irag, chief operations officer of the Office of Civil Defense in Davao Region (OCD-11), said responders were racing against time to find Rommel Gumatin, 36, who managed to capture in a “vlog” the exact moment when masses of earth, rock, and debris slid from an elevated portion in Barangay Mt. Diwata on Thursday.
Gumatin’s wife, 27-year-old Catherine (not 36 as previously reported by local police); and five children named Cristelle, 10; Hannah, 9; Ailee, 8; Dysna, 3; and Rommel “Arjay” Jr., 1, all died in the incident. The other fatalities were Ritchell Reboldad, 35; Agnes Bitoon, 44; and Elvera Saldua, 35.
“Our retrieval operations continue today with the local government of Monkayo and the [Davao de Oro] Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and the Bureau of Fire Protection to find the remaining missing person,” Irag said in a radio interview over dzRH.
“The [responders] were there in the area. I think that’s the father of the family that perished that they were searching,” he added.
Data from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) showed that a total of 83,174 families or 349,236 individuals were already affected by the flooding and landslides caused by the shearline in Davao de Oro, Davao del Norte, Davao Occidental, and Davao del Sur.
Of this, a total of 3,664 families composed of 11,797 individuals were displaced from their homes.
‘Uninhabitable mining area’
The search operation in Barangay Mt. Diwata had to be suspended on Friday as heavy rains continued to batter the area.
On Saturday, the weather already improved but the situation remained dangerous for the responders as the site of the landslide was steep and covered with soil and big boulders.
“We still have some areas with light to moderate rains due to shearline but in general, the weather is a lot better in the whole Davao region,” Irag said.
In Barangay Mt. Diwata, the OCD official said that the community is located in a mining area that was already declared uninhabitable by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) due to the danger it brings to the residents, especially during the rainy season.
A total of 12 landslides in Davao de Oro were recorded by the NDRRMC since the bad weather started on Jan. 16, including the one that killed Gumatan's family.
“The whole barangay itself, Mt. Diwata, [is] identified as a landslide-prone area. We have seen a social media post that says one of the casualties managed to post a vlog. In the video, we saw that their house was built on the mountainside identified as a landslide-prone area,” he stated.
“We have MGB reports and recommendations that supposedly, there should be no residents in the area. That is a continuing challenge for the LGU [local government unit] though not only in Mt. Diwata, Monkayo but in all areas of Davao region identified as landslide-prone areas, not only the mining areas,” he added.
Irag also clarified that there was no official report from the local government of Monkayo that the landslide was related to the underground mining operations in the area, which has been the primary source of income in the community.
“We cannot say, as of now, if there was a direct relation between the mining activity and the landslide,” Irag noted.
“But in consideration of the protocol of Davao de Oro LGU [local government unit], they issue an advisory for the pre-emptive evacuation of residents in landslide-prone areas and immediate suspension of [mining] activities in the area when the weather is bad,” he continued.
“It has been a real challenge for the LGUs to implement the relocation of the communities in the landslide-prone areas because they worry about their source of income. When there are relocation attempts, the community members would usually ask, ‘how about our livelihood?’” he said.