Memorial site declared for victims of landslide

Officials of Guihulngan City yesterday passed a resolution declaring the landslide area in Sitio (sub-village) Moog in Barangay (village) Planas as a memorial site for residents buried there.

Planas and Barangay Solonggon in the neighboring town of La Libertad were the worst-hit by landslides following the 6.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Central Visayas on February 6.

The number of fatalities in the disaster stood at 46 as of 1:30 p.m. yesterday. Fifty-nine people—22 in Planas and 37 in Solonggon—were still missing

Agencies and local government units involved in the search and retrieval of missing residents in two landslide areas in Negros Oriental have not set a definite period to end the operations.

“There is no timetable or deadline … It is up to local government units to decide,” Benito Ramos, executive director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, told the Inquirer.

Ramos said the operations would definitely continue for the next two days.

“The families of the missing victims still want to find their loved ones and until the mayors (of Guihulngan City and La Libertad town) request the search and retrieval groups to stop, they will continue,” he said.

In the absence of resolutions declaring the landslide areas as memorial sites, the retrieval operations will continue, Ramos said. “We don’t want to be insensitive to the families of the missing victims,” he said.

La Libertad Mayor Lawrence Limkaichong said the operations would depend on how the search and retrieval groups could sustain these. Aftershocks and rains have hampered their tasks and pose risks in the landslide areas.

Officials of the regional Office of Civil Defense (OCD), Department of Health (DOH), local government units and other agencies will have to discuss how long they would keep up the retrieval operations, Minda Morante, the regional OCD chief, said.

Some groups, she said, had already indicated pulling out in the next few days but they were also considering the sentiments of families of the missing victims, she said.

Rene Gargoles, Solonggon village chief, said if it was up to the families of the missing victims, they would want the search and retrieval operations to continue. “They want to give their loved ones a decent burial. They do not want them to be buried there forever,” he said.

Some, however, have accepted the possibility that the remains of the missing could not be found, Gargoles said.

Two Army soldiers digging at the landslide site in Solonggon found P70,000 in the mounds of loose earth and boulders. Privates Danny Faigne and Marlon V. Vera turned over the cash to Virginia Callora, who was identified as its rightful owner.