They fled the floods, but…
THEY fled their homes at midnight to avoid a possible flooding and sought shelter in a chapel located on higher ground. But what the Teduray residents of Kusiong Relocation Site in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte did not anticipate was that a portion of Mt. Minandar would give way, unleashing an avalanche of rocks, soil and water that destroyed everything on its path, including the chapel where they sought refuge, and the relocation site.
This sums up what landslide. happened in the early Kanakan told MindaNews hours of Friday in Kusiong, on Saturday morning according to Bai that at least 12 bodies
Fatima Kanakan, former had been retrieved as of 5 executive director of the p.m. on Friday and were now defunct Office of brought to a local funeral
Southern Cultural Communities home. Her uncle, Jhonny in the Autonomous Sap, was the third body Region in Muslim dug up from among those
Mindanao. Kanakan lost who evacuated to the St. her maternal uncle and Peter & St. Paul Episcopal a second cousin to the Chapel, a chapel that had stood there for at least 50 years, and before the landslide destroyed it, was made of concrete and amakan walls and galvanized iron roofing. The body of her second cousin, Recto Marcos, was the 12th retrieved.
But many more are still unaccounted. And the figures mentioned are about a hundred.
According to Situation 2 Report issued at 9 p.m. on October 28 by the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao’s Rapid Emergency Action on Disaster Incidence (Bangsamoro READi), heavy rains brought about by super typhoon ‘Paeng’ left at least 67 dead: 50 in Datu Odin Sinsuat (DOS) town, 10 in Datu Blah Sinsuat and seven in Upi, all of Maguindanao del Norte. The report also said 31 persons were injured and five are still missing in DOS.
But during a briefing for BARMM Chief Minister Ahod Balawag Ebrahim on Saturday morning, the statistics presented was that the death toll as of 6 a.m. was 40, 31 were injured and 15 are missing: 27 dead, 31 injured and four missing in DOS; five dead and seven missing in DBS; six dead and two missing in Upi and two dead and two missing in Barira. (see other story)
The local government, according to Kanakan, established the relocation site for residents near the sea about two years ago, to ensure the safety of its residents who, during Typhoon Frank in June 2008, experienced what was likely a storm surge -- the waves rising as high as the coconut trees, destroying their houses. The relocation site is on a higher ground, the chapel on an even higher ground.
But more than a storm surge, Kusiong is vulnerable to tsunamis and was among the areas badly hit by the tsunami of August 1976.
Kanakan shared with