Miners hit by landslide rejected typhoon warning, officer says
ITOGON, Philippines — A Philippine police officer who tried to persuade residents of a mining camp to move to safety as a powerful typhoon approached said Tuesday they refused to leave, and a day later the storm triggered a huge landslide that buried dozens of people.
Police Senior Inspector Heherson Zambale said he was stunned after learning that the massive landslide had covered a chapel and bunkhouses in the mountain village where he and other officials had met with some of the victims a day before the disaster struck on Saturday.
Typhoon Mangkhut, the most powerful storm to hit the Philippines this year, left at least 74 people dead and dozens of others missing, mostly in the avalanche in the gold-mining town of Itogon in Benguet province. The storm later blew on to Hong Kong and southern China, where it caused more deaths and damage.
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 centre as the typhoon approached.
A village officer who accompanied Zambale used a megaphone to warn people that Mangkhut 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.