MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Authorities
resumed searching Friday for victims of a landslide that killed at least 22
people in a remote Philippine gold-mining village where miners work their
small-scale claims with pickaxes.
Officials have no good estimate
of how many people are missing but say early reports of up to 100 were
overblown. Many could have stayed elsewhere for the Christmas holiday, they
said, or may have fled their mountainside shanties earlier in the night when
the hill started to crumble.
The land fell with a loud whoosh
hours before dawn Thursday on a mountain dotted with mine shafts and crude
shanties with corrugated metal roofs in Napnapan village in the southern
province of Compostela Valley.
"It was like a dump truck
unloading gravel and sand," said survivor Darwin Aguinawon, 27. "In
only three seconds, our house came rolling down the slope."
It was the area's second deadly
landslide in a year — 20 were killed in a neighboring village last April — and
prompted the environment secretary to call for curbing permits in the region's
small-scale mining industry.
Initial reports of about 100
missing were based solely on the number of shanties believed lost, but many
residents would have been on Christmas holiday or evacuated hours earlier when
the ground started moving, Pantukan town spokesman Arnulfo Lantayan told The
Associated Press.
"We are very confident
that it will not reach that number," he said.
The municipal disaster office
lowered its earlier death toll of 25, as reported by residents and village
leaders, to 22, based on the number of bodies recovered, Lantayan said.
It was difficult to determine
the number of missing because local authorities have no reliable records of the
mostly migrant miners who work in the area with their families, Civil Defense
chief Benito Ramos said.
Army photographs show a steep
mountainside that looks like it was gouged by a giant shovel. Houses are buried
in rubble or lying on their sides while crumpled metal roofs and trees lay
nearby.
One tunnel entrance appeared
half-covered by rocks and soil. It was not known how many mine shafts have been
blocked by debris or whether there were people inside.
A fissure in the mountain
discovered last year likely was aggravated by heavy rains and continuous mining
in the saturated ground.
Environment and Natural
Resources Secretary Ramon Paje said authorities had warned residents and local
officials last year that the fissure made the mountain susceptible to a
landslide.
He urged local officials to
stop handing out small-scale mining permits, now estimated to number about
3,000 all around the watershed.
AP
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