Philippines Storm Victims Fear Tsunami, Run To Mudslide

Rescuers dug up at least 18 bodies, including children, from the huge mound of dirt that now covers much of the village of Kusun in southern Maguindanao province. early Sunday.

Officials feared that between 80 and 100 people, including entire families, could be hit by floodwaters in the city of Kusun from Thursday night to early Friday, according to Naguib Sinarimbo, the former interior minister of the Muslim autonomous region. Buried or washed away by flash floods. separatist guerrillas.

Rescuers retrieve a body Sunday, Oct. 30, 2022, in the town of Datu Odin Sinsuat in Maguindanao, southern Philippines. (AP Photo)

Nalgae had a huge rainband that killed at least 61 people in eight provinces and a city in the Philippine archipelago, including Cuzon, and caused devastation in one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

The disaster in Kusong, largely inhabited by the Teduray minority, is tragic as its more than 2,000 villagers have been conducting annual disaster drills for decades in response to tsunamis that occur due to a deadly history.

But they were not prepared for the dangers that might come from Mount Minandal, at the foot of which their village is located, Sinarimbo said.

“When people heard the alarm bell, they ran and gathered in a church on the high ground,” Sinarimbo told The Associated Press, citing Kusong villagers.

“The problem is that it wasn’t the tsunami that flooded them, it was a lot of water and mud coming down from the mountains,” he said.

In August 1976, an 8.1-magnitude earthquake and tsunami struck Moro Bay around midnight, killing thousands and devastating coastal provinces, one of the deadliest natural disasters in Philippine history.

Nestled between Moro Bay and the 1,464-foot (446-meter) Mount Minandal, Kusong was one of the worst-hit areas in the 1976 disaster, and the village has never forgotten the tragedy.

Elderly villagers who survived the tsunami and powerful earthquake have passed on the nightmarish story to their children, warning them to prepare.

“Every year, they do drills to deal with the tsunami. Someone is assigned to ring the alarm bells, and they designate the heights that people should run to,” Sinarimbo said.

“The villagers were even taught the sound of the coming huge waves, according to the tsunami survivors’ recollections.” “But the geological disaster on the mountainside has not received much attention,” he said.

Bulldozers, backhoes and loaders were brought to Cuson on Saturday along with more than 100 rescuers from the army, police and volunteers from other provinces, but they were unable to dig where survivors said the church was located below , because the mounds of dirt are still dangerous, officials said, soft.

The National Disaster Response Agency reported that 22 people were missing from the storm that hit several provinces.

Rescuers evacuate residents from a flooded village in Tuguegarao City, Cagayan province, northern Philippines, Sunday, Oct. 30, 2022. (AP Photo, Philippine Coast Guard)

Sinarimbo said many of those who disappeared in Kusong were not included in the government’s official tally because the entire family may have been buried and no member could provide names and details to authorities.

Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Almorato, who traveled to the mudslide-hit community on Saturday, said the muddy flooding buried about 60 rural homes in the roughly 5-hectare (12-acre) community.

He did not estimate how many villagers might have been buried, but described the extent of the mudslide as “overwhelming” and said the nighttime disaster may have unfolded quickly.

Regional army commander Roy Gallimore has been assigned to lead an emergency command center for the search and retrieval efforts in Cuzon, officials said.

Stormy weather across swathes of the country has prompted the Coast Guard to ban sea travel in dangerously rough seas as millions of Filipinos plan a long weekend trip to visit relatives’ graves and meet with friends on Halloween family reunion. Mostly Roman Catholic countries.

More than 100 domestic and international flights were canceled, Manila’s international airport was briefly closed in stormy weather, and the Coast Guard banned sea navigation in storm-ravaged waters, leaving thousands of passengers stranded.

Floods inundated many provinces and cities, with some people trapped on their roofs and more than 700 homes damaged.

More than 168,000 people fled to evacuation camps. On Saturday, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. expressed disappointment at the high toll in a video conference with disaster mitigation officials.

“We should have done better,” Marcos Jr. said. “We couldn’t have predicted so much water, so we couldn’t warn people and then evacuate them into an impending flash flood.” About 20 typhoons and storms hit the Philippine Islands each year. It sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, which is much of the Pacific coast, where volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are frequent, making the country one of the most disaster-prone regions in the world.