5 more bodies recovered in ComVal landslide site

(Updated 6:07 p.m.) Five more bodies were retrieved Tuesday from the landslide site in Pantukan, Compostela Valley, raising the death toll to 13, a military official said. Lt. Col. Leopoldo Galon, spokesman of the Armed Forces’ Eastern Mindanao Command, said the bodies were found by civilians who were assisting the team organized to conduct the initial search and rescue operations. The operations shifted to search and retrieval last Monday as the team admitted that chances of finding survivors in the landslide that hit the mining site last Friday were dim. The landslide was blamed on incessant rain in the area. Galon identified four of the five as Vincent Balog, Junel Lapates, Noe Caincoy, and Jericho Escoto.
A GMA News TV Live report Tuesday afternoon quoted municipal administrator Bong Lantaya, head of the local municipal disaster risk reduction and management council in Pantukan, as saying that they have erected signages around the site of the landslide to inform people that the site will no longer be re-opened to villagers. The retrieval operations were halted early Tuesday due to a threat of another landslide in the area. More than 500 residents living around the mining site have been advised to voluntarily evacuate their homes. Despite the latest mining tragedy in southern Philippines, the Philippine National Police admitted that enforcing a mining ban in Compostela Valley would be difficult because of the miners' insistence on resuming operations even with a stoppage order, as well as the continuing threat from communist rebels who are likely to attack police forces securing the area. In Malacañang, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said the government will forcibly evacuate residents in the land-slide prone areas who will refuse to leave their homes. Lacierda said majority of the people living near the mining sites have already left, but there were still some who opted to remain despite the warning by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau that the place was “dangerous." “First of all, what we’re going to ask them to do is convince them to leave…But, yes, we are going to force them to leave kung ayaw nila for their own safety," he said at a press briefing. — with Mark D. Merueñas/KBK, GMA News