Police officer on miners: ‘They ignored advice to flee typhoon’

ITOGON, Philippines — A police officer who tried to persuade residents of a mining camp to move to safety as a powerful typhoon approached said yesterday they refused to leave, and a day later the storm triggered a huge landslide that buried dozens of people.

Senior Inspector Heherson Zambale said he was stunned after learning that the massive landslide had covered a chapel and bunkhouses in Barangay Ucab where he and other officials had met with some of the victims a day before the tragedy struck on Saturday.

Zambale said he and other local officials tried to convince the villagers, mostly small-scale miners and their families, to move to a safer evacuation center as the typhoon approached.

A barangay official who accompanied Zambale used a megaphone to warn people that Ompong was extraordinarily powerful and everybody should leave, he said.

The villagers told the policemen that they thought the chapel and nearby bunkhouses were on stable ground and that they would only move away if the storm became severe, he said.

Zambale said he saw about 15 villagers outside the chapel and bunkhouses. “Some were smiling and there were some who were just quiet. Some were listening to us,” he said.

Photographs provided by the Philippine National Police (PNP) showed the officers in hard hats and light green raincoats talking with the villagers outside of what appears to be the concrete chapel and nearby bunkhouse, with piles of sandbags nearby. Part of the mountain slope, covered in green foliage, can be seen behind the buildings.

Zambale said the mining community in Barangay Ucab had some 250 people living in a 2.5-hectare area.

The mining community surrounds the main tunnel with around ten smaller tunnels.

Zambale added it is possible that the number of those who perished from the landslide may reach a hundred. 

Zambale, who has battled insurgents and criminals for eight years, said he had a bad feeling about the clearing where the buildings stood near a river, surrounded by tall mountains.

He noted that some villagers heeded the warnings and left before the typhoon struck.

“But many were left behind,” Zambale said.

Benguet police director Senior Supt. Lyndon Mencio said while some appeared to have left the area after being warned, many of the miners returned to the bunkhouse near the main tunnel just below the mountain slope.

Mencio pointed out the soil was already soggy from the heavy rains pouring in the area since last month.

“They claimed typhoons do not bother them, so they made it a reason to return to the site,” Mencio told dzMM.

“While on their way to the chapel, they even sang,” he added.

Mencio said before the landslide in Ucab occurred, rescuers were in Loakan trying to retrieve several people buried in a separate landslide.

“The rescuers had two backhoes and they successfully rescued a couple at the site in Loakan,” he said. – Raymund Catindig, Emmanuel Tupas, Cecille Suerte Felipe