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NATURE'S WRATH. A U.S. helicopter makes an aerial assessment of the deadly landslide that buried an entire village in St. Bernard, Southern Leyte a day after the disaster.
A woman, with mud caking on her face, gasps for breath after she was dug out from the mudslide.
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Southern Leyte, PHILIPPINES --- Tons of mud and rocks tumbled down from the mountain on Friday, February 17, after weeks of rains and swallowed a whole village of between 2,000 and 3,000 people, including a schoolhouse filled with children.
(More stories and photos on pages 11, 30 and 31 of Hardcopy Edition)
Some survivors were seen fleeing naked but hundreds were feared dead and the village of Guinsaugon in St. Bernard town had virtually disappeared from the map in the latest disaster to hit the calamity-prone country, according to a Philippine Daily Inquirer report.
One official said the dead could run into thousands, but this was not confirmed.
As of Thursday, February 23, five days after the disaster, 122 bodies have been pulled out and around 1,000 people remain missing.
The landslide, which happened at 10 a.m. and was followed by a mild 2.6 magnitude tremor half an hour later, bulldozed everything, said Southern Leyte Rep. Roger Mercado.
“The earth swallowed them up,” he told the Inquirer. “It was as though the barangay had disappeared from the map.”
Pope Benedict XVI urged “speedy and generous” help for the survivors of the landslide.
The Pope sent a telegram to the bishop of Maasin, expressing his “spiritual closeness” to the people of the Philippines and saying he was “deeply pained” by the tragedy.
About 300 pupils and their mothers were at the Guinsaugon Elementary School to commemorate “Women’s Day” when the roar from the mountain came. It was not clear how many were buried in the schoolhouse.
Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz, head of the National Disaster Coordinating Council, said 500 millimeters of rainfall had fallen in the Southern Leyte area from Feb. 1 to 16.
This was a huge amount compared to the average February rainfall of 127 millimeters recorded in the area in the previous 30 years, he said.
“It seems that this was the direct cause of the landslide,” Cruz said.
Relief officials said body parts could be seen protruding from the mud but these could not be removed because the soil was still very soft and these were buried by at least 20 meters thick of mud.
Foreign help immediately poured in.
In Geneva, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it had released the equivalent of $152,000 to provide assistance to the ravaged village.
The US military diverted a naval vessel taking part in war games in the Philippines to help the landslide victims.
Estimates of the extent of casualties were conflicting.
“The estimates vary but really, there are hundreds of families that have been affected and thousands of people feared dead,” Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral said on ANC network.
Philippine National Red Cross Chair Richard Gordon gave a lower figure.
“There are about 1,500 missing, 200 dead,” the Agence France-Presse quoted Gordon as saying by phone from Geneva, where he was attending a Red Cross conference.
Air Force pilots who flew over the disaster scene reported that 90 percent of the more than 300 houses in the village were buried under mud.
“They were only able to see rooftops and felled coconut trees,” Air Force spokesperson Lt. Col. Restituto Padilla said. He said that in some places the mudslide was up to six meters thick.
The tragedy was the latest of a long series of calamities to hit Southern Leyte. A killer landslide in 2003 hit three towns on Panaon Island and killed 105 people.
In November 1991, about 6,000 people were killed on Leyte island by floods and landslides triggered by a tropical storm.
Many of the dead in yesterday’s calamity were feared to be children who were in an elementary school when the mud and boulders came crashing down.
One witness said the entire village of Guinsaugon was no longer visible.
“You can see only mud where the village was from the road,” said Virgilio Mortera, mayor of Cabalian, a town next to St. Bernard, one of Southern Leyte’s Pacific towns.
Mortera was one of the first persons to go to the scene.
“Survivors were walking with their clothes covered in mud,” he said.
Mud also covered some of those pulled out alive by rescuers.
One child, apparently a girl, looked scared, her eyes open, as someone wiped the mud off her face, according to television footage.
From the footage, it looked as if half of the mountain had crumbled.
Some survivors were seen fleeing the village naked, according to Norma Lim, a retired public school teacher and resident of Tanian.
The tragedy struck with no warning.
Lim said it was a sunny day when the people of Guinsaugon heard a loud crash and felt the earth shake before water mixed with mud and boulders fell from the mountain.
“It looked like the entire mountain fell on the village,” said Mayor Mortera.
He said that when he went to the scene to find out how he could help, he saw “only one house that remained standing.”
Mud and rocks filled the village the size of three basketball courts.
He said from the way things looked, “up to 1,000 people could be dead there.”
Mortera said volunteers who wanted to help were unable to reach the village as the weather turned bad after the mudslides.
“Mud is everywhere,” said Mortera.
Officials expressed fear the death toll could rise as there was just one hospital near Guinsaugon and that is in Anahawan town. The hospital is now filled with injured people, according to Lim.
“We did not find injured people,” said Ricky Estela, a crewman on a helicopter that flew to the scene. “Most of them are dead and beneath the mud.”
The mud was so deep and unstable that rescue workers had difficulty approaching the buried school. Southern Leyte Gov. Rosette Lerias put the population of the village of 375 households at 3,000.
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Jersey City, NEW JERSEY --- Several Filipino groups expressed outrage over what many are calling “a blatant act of police brutality, racial discrimination, and anti-immigrant sentiment” on the part of two Jersey City police officers who arrested and detained a young Filipino who was about to file a complaint against an erring cab driver.
Alan James Alda, 25, a Jersey City warehouse worker originally from Manila, was startled when police suddenly “arrested and threw him into a detention cell” at about 3:00 am on Saturday after he asked for the names of the two police officers who rudely dismissed his complaint against cab driver for overcharging fare.
Alda and two of his young Filipino friends had gone to the Jersey City Police Department Precinct near Manila Avenue to report on a cab driver for overcharging fare and demanding upfront payment.
“We went up to the two police officers in order to file a complaint against the cab driver but instead we were rudely told to start walking home,” stated Arcy Yuson, Alda’s companion at the time.
After dismissing their complaint, Alda asked the police officers for their names. It was then that the tide shifted. “Alan was physically grabbed by the cops and arrested”, Yuson explained. “We were shocked.”
The two police officers threatened Alda’s companions with arrest but eventually left them standing outside the police precinct as they took Alda in.
Once in custody of the Jersey City police, sources claimed that the two continued to intimidate Alda, with another unidentified officer even going as far as asking if he was a “terrorist” after they found foreign currency in his pocket.
All this time, police officers have not informed Alda of the charges against him, even as he sat in jail. He would later be released later that morning.
When asked by an attending officer what he had learned from the whole experience, he was told to shut up immediately by surrounding officials upon his attempt to answer.
It was shortly after that that Alda became aware of his charges upon receipt of a slip of paper that stated police complaints of so-called “disorderly conduct” and “resisting arrest”.
“Alan never resisted arrest or created a physically threatening situation for the cops. Why would he? We went to the police precinct to file a complaint. We went there looking for help!” Yuson stated.
“The police seemed to be more interested in insulting these three Filipino immigrants rather than helping them. Alan and his companions were simply asserting their right to police protection, a move which landed Alan a night in a jail cell,” stated Nicholas Cordero, an organizer for Anakbayan, a Filipino youth group based in Jersey City, of which Alda is also a member.
“The police were out of line. Alan’s only crime was that he was Filipino, brown-skinned, and obviously foreign-born. Like many other immigrants of color, this is the treatment we receive from the public servants whose paychecks are paid for by our tax dollars. But more often than not, it is the police that end up threatening our rights and welfare.” Cordero said.
“The police must be held accountable for this. Their conduct was absolutely unacceptable and must not be tolerated.” stated Cristina Godinez, New York attorney and Immigrant Rights Coordinator of the Philippine Forum, an immigrant rights advocacy organization in Queens. “I am concerned about the reckless disregard for an immigrant’s civil rights and the rash suspicion that he is a terrorist.”
Cordero asserted that “criminal brutality and racial profiling” by the Jersey City police officers against Alda that night is not an isolated case.
“It’s a common reality for young Filipinos in Jersey City. Immigrants are particularly vulnerable, especially in light of the immigrant-scapegoating climate post 9/11. What’s important is that we unite as a community to speak out against these injustices when they happen. We will not stay silent as long as this type of repression exists.”
When asked about coming forward about his story, Alda mentioned “hindi para lang sa akin eto, para sa mga ibang kabataang migrante din. [This is not just for me, but for all migrant youth].”
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MANILA --- Rescuers have temporarily called off search efforts in Barangay Guinsaugon in St. Bernard town, Southern Leyte because driving rain and days of digging in the soft, fetid mud raised the risk of further landslides.
“Our geologists are studying the area for fear of mudslides. It was raining hard this morning,” Col. Raul Farnacio, in charge of the Philippine Army’s rescue operations, said.
US marines had to airlift seven Taiwanese rescue workers to safety after they got stuck in the mud, which is 30 meters (100 feet) deep in some places and covers a nine square kilometer (3.5 square mile) area.
So far, 122 bodies have been pulled out and around 1,000 people remain missing.
Hopes of a miraculous recovery were raised on Monday when search teams heard rhythmic noise near the site of a packed elementary school buried under metros of mud.
But no sound has been picked up since and claims earlier this week that the school had been located proved premature.
Teams are still searching for the building, which was thought to have been swept off its foundations by the tidal wave of earth.
Rescuers also scotched media reports that a live chicken had been found 15 meters under the mud: “It’s quite impossible for a chicken to live in that condition,” said Adriano Fuego, Director of the Office of Civil Defense.
Some officials have said privately there is no hope of digging anyone out alive, but Southern Leyte Governor Rosette Lerias said the rescue effort would continue.
Around 400 people who escaped, along with around 1,600 people evacuated from neighboring villages, are sheltered in packed parish churches and schools while emergency teams dig up and then bury the dead.
The Philippines is usually hit by about 20 typhoons each year, but environmental groups such as Greenpeace blame the government for turning a blind eye to illegal logging or mining, which makes the ground unstable.
Residents were evacuated a week before Friday’s disaster struck because of the heavy rains but many came back when there was a brief break in the downpour. (MNS)
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MANILA --- Pope Benedict XVI has chosen Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales as among the first 15 cardinals of his pontificate, the Philippine bishops’ office said Wednesday.
The pope also named as cardinal a fierce critic of the Chinese government during his weekly general audience at the Vatican Wednesday.
Rosales’ elevation as a “Prince of the Church” was announced by Archbishop Antonio Franco, apostolic nuncio to the Philippines, during a mass at the Manila Cathedral, said Mark Tallara, media relations assistant at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines media office.
The 73-year-old prelate was also named elector in the College of Cardinals.
Rosales, who will be the sixth Filipino cardinal, took the place of the late Jaime Cardinal Sin as archbishop of the Philippines’ biggest and oldest archdiocese of Manila on November 21, 2003.
During his term as archbishop of Lipa City, he was an influential voice in the people’s fight against environmentally destructive firms in the province of Batangas.
Pope Benedict XVI said the 15 archbishops would be elevated at a consistory at the Vatican on March 24. Twelve of the 15 cardinals -- including Rosales -- are currently under 80, the age limit for the right to vote in a conclave to choose Benedict’s successor.
Pope Paul VI decreed that the number of cardinal electors -- those under 80 -- should not exceed 120, and Wednesday’s nominations will fill the number of vacant places that would exist in the electoral College of Cardinals by the date of the consistory.
“I have to announce that on March 24 I will hold a consistory, for which I will nominate the new members of the College of Cardinals,” said Benedict, the former cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who was elected pope on April 19 last year.
The 78-year-old pontiff made the announcement to thousands of applauding pilgrims at his weekly general audience at the Vatican, calling the March 24 date for the consistory “particularly appropriate” as it is the day the Church celebrates the pontificate of St Peter, the first pope.
The 12 other cardinal electors named by the pope on Wednesday include three from the Roman Curia, or Vatican government -- Slovenian archbishop Franc Rode, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Religious; Agostino Vallini of Italy, head of the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature, the Vatican’s highest judicial tribunal; and the American Levada.
The others are Venezuelan Josge Urosa Savino, archbishop of Caracas; Spain’s Antonio Canizares Lovera, archbishop of Toledo; and American Patrick O’Malley, archbishop of Boston.
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