Landslide also buries sisters’ hope

DAVAO CITY—Judith Avila Taladok and her sister, Imelda, had agreed to open a food outlet in the school canteen where she teaches so they could keep Imelda’s husband from working in the landslide-prone mining site in Pantukan town in Compostela Valley.

“Everything had been prepared,” Taladok said. She said they had even raised fare money for Elmer Torred, who was hired as mine portal guard, “and were looking forward for his coming home.”

Last talk

But five days before Elmer was to come home on Jan. 10, a series of landslides occurred in Sitio Diat Uno in Barangay Napnapan, Pantukan, burying tunnels and the mining community in Sitio Diat Dos. His body, bloated and discolored, was among those found by rescuers and brought to Mabini Funeral House on Friday.

Still grappling with her shock, Imelda recalled how she last talked with Elmer through cell phone at 2 p.m. on Jan. 4. Her husband said he had already advanced his pay and was sending it the following day to tide the family over.

He did not get the chance to send the money.

Imelda said Elmer left their house in Melgar Basilisa on Dinagat Island on Dec. 3 last year to work as a portal guard for Hexat Mines. “He did not get to spend Christmas and New Year with the family, but he promised to return home on Jan. 10 to be on my birthday on Jan. 12,” she said.

Identifying marks

After their talk, Imelda received a call the next day from Elmer’s friend, telling her to check if he was among the landslide survivors. She said she tried to reach Elmer by cell phone, but no one was answering her calls.

News of the disaster prompted the two sisters to rush to Pantukan, where the Army has set up an “incident command center” on the municipal hall grounds to keep track of search-and-rescue efforts in the area.

Imelda found Elmer at the funeral parlor, his skin so dark and body bloated. At first she did not believe it was him until she found the tattoo on his arm and the cyst near his foot. “He had been complaining of that cyst and we were planning to go to the doctor to have it removed,” she said.

Taladok said the family was aware that Elmer was risking his life working at the tunnels so they decided to start a food business at the canteen of Talomo Elementary School to keep him far from danger.

Mining ban

Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo said he would look into the culpability of local officials for failing to enforce a law banning mining activities in Sitio Diat and other high-risk areas in Pantukan. Diat sits next to Sitio Panganason in Barangay Kingking, where another landslide killed at least 26 people on Good Friday last year.

The communist New People’s Army (NPA) said the government only had itself to blame for favoring large-scale miners and failing to provide jobs and livelihood for landless farmers and urban poor who desperately risk their lives in the mines to eke out a living.

“Malacañang officials were quick to put the sole responsibility to local authorities for tolerating small-scale miners,” said a statement from the NPA’s Crucifino Uballas Command.

“The exploited peasant masses have no adequate lands to speak of and the urban poor have no jobs, the latter go to the countryside where they resort to backward and dangerous,” it said.