Talamban landslide victims return to danger zone

While the inter-agency investigating team was conducting field investigation, residents affected by the May 8 Talamban landslide were also inching their way back.

And barangay Talamban officials seemed helpless in keeping the residents out of harm’s way.

The interagency investigating team headed by the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) together with OBO, Cebu City Planning and Development Office (CPDO) and Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB-7), yesterday visited the site of the May 8 accident.

But residents affected by the accident that claimed two lives and caused multiple injuries decided to leave their evacuation center at Talamban Elementary School after they were told their food ration was only until Monday evening.

Perla Peñafort, the settlers’ spokeperson, told CEBU DAILY NEWS they decided to leave since they were not allowed by the school principal to cook in the school grounds.

Barangay captain Jesus Remedios Jr. confirmed giving the evacuees the go signal but warned about the danger of going back.

“Mao lagi na’y problema kay mamalik gyud sila. Muhangyo lang unta ko nila nga mubakwit kay kung naa sa’y mahitabo nga dautan, kami nasay basulon (Residents going back is really a problem. We are asking them to evacuate because if anything bad happens, we are always to blame),” Remedios said.

Peñafort added that since enrollment is about to start, evacuees would be transferred to the Talamban Sports Complex.

Alvin Santillana of the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (CDRRMC) was astounded to learn the residents returned to the disaster area.

“The disaster area is still a danger zone. They should have been stopped from returning,” Santillana said.

“Families living in the whole area should be evacuated,” he added.

Mark Anthony Lindugan of the HLURB said they will release their recommendation after Office of the Building Official and the City Engineers Office of Cebu City approves the new slope retention wall design of Casa del Rio.

City Hall’s Division for the Welfare of the Urban Poor (DWUP) had documented 56 families living in the danger zone and offered to relocate them in sitio Budlaan, also in Talamban.

Despite their miseries, affected residents yesterday also remembered the community’s patron San Isidro Labrador whose fiesta was celebrated yesterday.

A 22-year-old settler named Maria Isabel Archival, whose house was totally wrecked by the disaster, said in Cebuano, “We don’t have money for a celebration. We will go to church, light candles and offer prayers.”

Archival, together with four relatives, are staying in the house of their auntie Carmela Oporto, whose hut is just a few meters away from the collapsed wall.

Alicia Oporto is grateful she and her family are safe even if the collapsed slope retention of Casa del Rio damaged their kitchen.

“I am thankful to Saint Isidro we were not very much affected,” said 50-year-old Oporto in Cebuano.