This past summer,2010,Mindanao endured a terrible drought courtesy of"El Nino."Whenever there is a Nino Summer,a"La Nina"Spring occurs the following year.In our case that means an early and very heave Northeast Monsoon.Having travelled widely I have yet to find a wetter place than South Asia during its Monsoon.
Mindanao is terribly wracked by illegal logging and an almost un-regulated Artisinal (Small Scale) Mining industry.Small Scale Miners aren't ornery old men with cute donkeys,panhandling for gold.In SE Asia they are ruthless people who usually use their wives and small children as unpaid labour.To extract precious metals they first denude entire hills of their timber to build giant sluices,or if tunneling, to use the wood for supports and ladders,selling all excess lumber which then fuels the illegal logging trade.Then they use fun stuff like cyanide and mercury to leech the tailings and get every last crumb of metal.
This wholesale abuse of the land takes its toll and so every Monsoon we see more and more landslides.The worst one I personally know of is the 2005 landslide in Leyte that buried 1700 villagers,including more than 1,000 children under the age of 10 whose schools were covered in 30 meters of dense mud and rock.
On Good Friday,April 22nd I was sitting in our kitchen,which like almost all rural Philippine kitchens sits outside under a corrugated zinc roof,enjoying the rain when my youngest brother in law ran to me breathlessly to tell me I had a call on my inlaw's landline.To my suprise I discovered the commanding officer of our town's garrison waiting to talk to me.We actually talk quite often regarding other matters but since neither his Company nor the paramilitary I'm involved with were operating the call was unexpected.He quickly informed me that there had been a bad landslide in the neighbouring municipality of Pantukan.At an Artisinal Mining site more than a hectare had moved to the bottom of the hill.Aside from the 7 mining tunnels inside the hillside itself there was a squatter community below it.
Although most Filipinos are Catholic it is a thin verneer.It is like the Catholicism of Haiti,or Cuba.Good Friday for the miners is an opportunity to sacrifice a pig or chicken to the deity of the underworld in each main tunnel.Beginning at midnite,it then devolves into drunken debauchery and so it was that more than 120 miners were inside the 7 main tunnels at 330AM when the hilltop quickly slid.Below the tunnel outlets,at the bottom of the hill,7 miner's homes and 2 bunkhouses for transients were blown apart by the impact and then quickly buried under 10 meters of mud.
The officer wanted to know if I would be willing to donate the use of my heavy equipment since almost all farming,construction and mining is done either manually or by carabao (water buffalo).Of course I agreed to lend a medium bulldozer and an excavator but didn't have any way of hauling them to the site since tour two 10 wheelers with hydraulic tilt beds were in a convoy on the other side of the island hauling rice.Calling me back in 15 minutes the officer asked me to move the pieces out to the hiway,3km distant and the military would pick them up.Finally arriving on the hiway I was shocked when I heard the sound of rotors.The Philippine Air Force (PAF) doesn't operate in inclement weather unless an absolute emergency is taking place and even then usually won't do so.I was even more shocked when the copter began to set down on the hiway (when I say"hiway"I mean a 2 lane paved road with little traffic.Filipinos walk down its centre,that's how few people utilise it).Apparently they thought that I would allow them to tow my pieces.When a copter tows they use a heavy duty copter with 4 chains underneath.The copter then carries the piece under it,just so.This being the Philippines I would never be indemnified if they landed hard,a chain snapped or an insurgent fired an RPG or machinegun (50 cal and 60MM would destroy it).I told them it wasn't going to happen .Angry,there wasn't much they could do.Trying to help,realising lives might hang in the balance I did offer to make some calls to some friends who may be able to lend a hand.I have a mate who manages the base camp of Russell Mining and National Development.Russell is a US-based multi-national and the base camp is a mere 4km from Barangay Kingking,the section in Pantukan where the disaster took place.I called,of course he complied and sent over 1 D9,a dozer with a 4.5 meter wide blade.I also called Apex Mining as well a 2nd multi-national and they sent a crew of labourers and an engineer.A person might imagine that the town's mayor might have done these things but not in the Philippines.
I spent 5 days out there,but we only recovered 14 bodies and rescued 9.Officially there are 8 people missing so that the death toll is 22,or so the government says.The truth of the matter is that well over 120 died there.We even have the names and addresses but the government minimalises such things to avoid Senate Panels and Congressional Hearings (the government is modeled on the American system,pity them.
I will get the rest in my next post,though my following post will be a few photos of the disaster.
Mindanao is terribly wracked by illegal logging and an almost un-regulated Artisinal (Small Scale) Mining industry.Small Scale Miners aren't ornery old men with cute donkeys,panhandling for gold.In SE Asia they are ruthless people who usually use their wives and small children as unpaid labour.To extract precious metals they first denude entire hills of their timber to build giant sluices,or if tunneling, to use the wood for supports and ladders,selling all excess lumber which then fuels the illegal logging trade.Then they use fun stuff like cyanide and mercury to leech the tailings and get every last crumb of metal.
This wholesale abuse of the land takes its toll and so every Monsoon we see more and more landslides.The worst one I personally know of is the 2005 landslide in Leyte that buried 1700 villagers,including more than 1,000 children under the age of 10 whose schools were covered in 30 meters of dense mud and rock.
On Good Friday,April 22nd I was sitting in our kitchen,which like almost all rural Philippine kitchens sits outside under a corrugated zinc roof,enjoying the rain when my youngest brother in law ran to me breathlessly to tell me I had a call on my inlaw's landline.To my suprise I discovered the commanding officer of our town's garrison waiting to talk to me.We actually talk quite often regarding other matters but since neither his Company nor the paramilitary I'm involved with were operating the call was unexpected.He quickly informed me that there had been a bad landslide in the neighbouring municipality of Pantukan.At an Artisinal Mining site more than a hectare had moved to the bottom of the hill.Aside from the 7 mining tunnels inside the hillside itself there was a squatter community below it.
Although most Filipinos are Catholic it is a thin verneer.It is like the Catholicism of Haiti,or Cuba.Good Friday for the miners is an opportunity to sacrifice a pig or chicken to the deity of the underworld in each main tunnel.Beginning at midnite,it then devolves into drunken debauchery and so it was that more than 120 miners were inside the 7 main tunnels at 330AM when the hilltop quickly slid.Below the tunnel outlets,at the bottom of the hill,7 miner's homes and 2 bunkhouses for transients were blown apart by the impact and then quickly buried under 10 meters of mud.
The officer wanted to know if I would be willing to donate the use of my heavy equipment since almost all farming,construction and mining is done either manually or by carabao (water buffalo).Of course I agreed to lend a medium bulldozer and an excavator but didn't have any way of hauling them to the site since tour two 10 wheelers with hydraulic tilt beds were in a convoy on the other side of the island hauling rice.Calling me back in 15 minutes the officer asked me to move the pieces out to the hiway,3km distant and the military would pick them up.Finally arriving on the hiway I was shocked when I heard the sound of rotors.The Philippine Air Force (PAF) doesn't operate in inclement weather unless an absolute emergency is taking place and even then usually won't do so.I was even more shocked when the copter began to set down on the hiway (when I say"hiway"I mean a 2 lane paved road with little traffic.Filipinos walk down its centre,that's how few people utilise it).Apparently they thought that I would allow them to tow my pieces.When a copter tows they use a heavy duty copter with 4 chains underneath.The copter then carries the piece under it,just so.This being the Philippines I would never be indemnified if they landed hard,a chain snapped or an insurgent fired an RPG or machinegun (50 cal and 60MM would destroy it).I told them it wasn't going to happen .Angry,there wasn't much they could do.Trying to help,realising lives might hang in the balance I did offer to make some calls to some friends who may be able to lend a hand.I have a mate who manages the base camp of Russell Mining and National Development.Russell is a US-based multi-national and the base camp is a mere 4km from Barangay Kingking,the section in Pantukan where the disaster took place.I called,of course he complied and sent over 1 D9,a dozer with a 4.5 meter wide blade.I also called Apex Mining as well a 2nd multi-national and they sent a crew of labourers and an engineer.A person might imagine that the town's mayor might have done these things but not in the Philippines.
I spent 5 days out there,but we only recovered 14 bodies and rescued 9.Officially there are 8 people missing so that the death toll is 22,or so the government says.The truth of the matter is that well over 120 died there.We even have the names and addresses but the government minimalises such things to avoid Senate Panels and Congressional Hearings (the government is modeled on the American system,pity them.
I will get the rest in my next post,though my following post will be a few photos of the disaster.