Retrieval ops end for missing Sagada cave tourist

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines – Giving up after nine days of searching, retrieval operations for missing Dagupan, Pangasinan tourist Eufrocinia “Irene” Manaois has ended Wednesday.

The town’s disaster risk reduction council, said Inspector Kristine Gamboa, Sagada town police commander, has decided to stop the search and rescue operations inside the cave that went on from August 19 until Wednesday.

The family of Manaois, who trekked up to Sagada the other day to see for themselves the ongoing search and rescue operations by combined government and local village teams, has gone home and also gave the go signal to stop the operations, Gamboa said.

On Tuesday, a strong stench allegedly came out from the cave, prompting search teams to go back to the cave to verify but still emerged unsuccessful, the police officer said.

Manaois reportedly slipped off inside the Sumaguing Cave, a very popular spelunking destination in Sagada during the onslaught of monsoon rains last week.

At least 31 including Manaois and 13 Japanese students were earlier reported missing inside the cave. All 30 were rescued aside from Manaois.

Tourism Department director Purificacion Molintas admitted a temporarily slowdown of spelunking adventures specifically in Sagada after the incident. 

She showed confidence though that the incident does not at all create a big dent on the tourism business in the province.

The incident serves as a lesson to stakeholders in the Sagada tourism to immediately ban spelunking during inclement and rainy weather and a strict compliance among tourist guides to exercise foresight especially during these kinds of weather conditions, she said.

In July 2001 during typhoon Feria, a tourist guide and a tourist were fished out of the pool waters inside the cave five days after drowning.

Such gave cues on rescuers and local villagers to continue on scouring the cave until Wednesday.

An indigenous ritual called 'ayag' (to call) was conducted twice by elders 'calling for the body' of the trapped tourist to appear.