Mt. Diwalwal settlers told to abandon area

DAVAO CITY — The nearly 100,000 people living in the gold-rush site on Mt. Diwalwal in Monkayo, Compostela Valley have been told to abandon the area after experts identified it as among the high-risk areas for landslides in Southern Mindanao.

Monkayo Mayor Joel Brilliantes ordered the immediate evacuation of the settlers to prevent loss of lives should a disaster similar to that in Southern Leyte happen.

Brilliantes said a geo-science management team has been identifying which areas in the gold-rush site should be abandoned.

Despite this, Brilliantes prefers that all the residents leave the mining site soon.

Authorities have been monitoring other mining areas in Southern Mindanao for threats of landslides, especially with the heavy rainfall in the region in the past few days.

"We have been monitoring developments in Mt. Diwalwal as well as in the adjacent town of Pantukan because of the heavy rains, and these areas are known to be prone to landslides," Carmelito Lupo, Region 11 chief of the Office of Civil Defense, told The STAR.

Thousands of people have been killed in numerous landslides in Mt. Diwalwal.

More than 40,000 settlers in Mt. Diwalwal are engaged in small-scale mining, and live in shanties that stand on unstable mountainsides.

Thousands of other small-scale miners have trekked to Pantukan town following reports of ore deposits there.

Lupo said contingency measures have been put in place should there be a need to evacuate people in the mining sites.

Meanwhile, more than 168 families in a village in Taragona, Davao Oriental were also advised to evacuate due to fears that a landslide might occur in the area.

"We advised the people to flee Sitio Ugbok, Barangay Tubaon in Taragona and be relocated because of the rotational slide that we have noticed in the place," said Desiderio Cabanlit of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs).

Cracks in the ground have been observed to continue to deepen, prompting the authorities to hurry up the relocation.

"In the meantime, we are looking for a place safe enough for these people to relocate," Cabanlit said.

"No one is already allowed in the area at nighttime, especially since these cracks continue to move," Lupo said.

Taragona town is four and a half hours away from Davao City.