Leyte Landslide

TACLOBAN CITY, Leyte -- The Office of Civil Defense in Eastern Visayas has again warned people of the need to be alert to possible floods and landslides as more rains and typhoons are expected in the next few months.

Rey Gozon, administrative officer at the regional OCD office here, said that the history of Eastern Visayas shows it is prone to being hit by typhoons during the last quarter of the year and the first quarter of the next.

Continuous heavy rain could put in peril the lives of people living in low-lying areas due to flash floods and those at the foot of mountains due to landslides, he said.

Gozon said it is important that people recognize signs of impending disaster and immediately move to safer ground if they feel their lives are threatened.

People in disaster-prone areas of the region have attended seminars on disaster preparedness recently organized by the regional offices of the OCD, the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), and the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Administration (Pagasa).

Other measures include the distribution of geo-hazard maps prepared by the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (Namria), the installation of early warning devices such as rain gauge in some pilot barangays (villages), and the giving away of some 200 warning bells donated by Smart Communications to Southern Leyte and Leyte.

Gozon said the technical working group of the Regional Disaster Coordinating Council (RDCC) in Eastern Visayas would meet early this month to discuss disaster preparedness concerns.

Gozon disclosed that in a meeting of the RDCC last month, OCD regional director Salvador Estudillo called for the immediate reactivation of local disaster councils because of the expected bad weather ahead.

Estudillo had earlier said that Leyte, Southern Leyte, Northern Samar, and Eastern Samar were identified as disaster-prone areas.

In Leyte alone, the MGB has identified more than 600 villages as prone to flooding and landslides. Of these barangays, 117 have high flood and landslide susceptibility, 240 have moderate susceptibility, and 245 have low susceptibility.

In February last year, days of heavy rains caused a massive landslide in St. Bernard, Southern Leyte, burying the whole village of Guinsaugon and killing over a thousand villagers.

On November 5, 1991, at the height of typhoon Reming, a killer flood claimed the lives of more than 5,000 people in Ormoc City, many of them living dangerously on a sandbar in the middle of a river.

Continuous heavy rains caused landslides and floods in Panaon Island in Southern Leyte on December 19, 2003, resulting in the deaths of more than 150 people in San Ricardo, Pintuyan, San Francisco, and Liloan towns.

In the late 1980s, more than a hundred people in Samar Island died in landslides and floods caused by continuous heavy rain.