Residents marooned 3 days in mountain village cheer rescuers

An excavator works to clear the highway of boulders and earth at Cortes township, Bohol province in central Philippines Thursday Oct. 17, 2013. AP

CEBU CITY—For the past three days, they slept on the soggy  ground, with only makeshift tents to protect them from the wind and rain. And they subsisted on coconut water and boiled bananas and corn while waiting for rescue.

Thus when rescue finally arrived on Friday, the 63 residents of the mountain village of Tanawan in Loon, one of the municipalities of Bohol hit hardest by last Tuesday’s killer earthquake, could not but scream in jubilation.

“We had been waiting for them to arrive after we were told that we would be rescued. On Thursday, somebody said a chopper would come and get us, but no one arrived,” said Manilyn Mandresa, 19. “When we saw them (the rescuers), we all shouted for joy,” she told the Inquirer In Cebu in an interview by cell phone from an evacuation camp on safer grtound in Tanawan.

The 63 persons, 21 of them children, were found in tattered tents in the mountains by  18 members of the Metro Manila Development Authority rescue  about 11 a.m. on Friday, said Aldo R. Mayor,  the team’s MMDA  public safety chief, in a phone interview.

He said he had heard about a group of residents who were trapped in the mountains of Tanawan, about 7 km from the town proper of Loon, who could not come down because the roads were either destroyed or blocked by boulders. Besides, the place had ravines 200 meters deep, he added.

“Nobody seemed to pay attention to them, so I insisted on going to the rescue because we have to priortize the living,” said Mayor.

With the help of a local guide, they were able to blaze a new trail that led them to the marooned residents. They tied ropes along the way to guide them on their way back.

It took the team three hours to get to the residents, who shouted in jubilation, Mayor said, adding the people’s reaction on seeing them made the rescuers feel like celebrities.

It took the rescuers and the residents another three hours to get down from the mountains. The residents are now at an evacuation site, still in Tanawan, but relieved they are on safer ground.

Mayor said the residents would be endorsed to the municipal government.

Mandresa recalled that she was in Loon proper, where she was working as a nanny, when the earthquake struck at 8:12 a.m. on Tuesday. She decided to go home posthaste because she was worried about her husband, Ronaldo, and two-year-old son, Alexander Nigel, who were in their home in Tanawan.

Mandresa took a habal-habal, a passenger motorcycle,  to Tanawan but could not get to her house because the roads had been blocked by boulders.

“I climbed over the rocks to get to my son,” she said. She found her husband and son outside their home.

Like her neighbors, they decided to move to higher ground  for fear of being hit by falling rocks as aftershocks continued, and built makeshift tents where they thought it was safe.

Since they could not get down because the roads were impassable on  top of the danger posed by falling rocks, they waited there for help.  They slept on the ground and when it rained that first evening, they got wet.

She said that after the little food they brought was gone, they subsisted on boiled corn and bananas. For water, they relied on coconuts.

The children in the group suffered from colds and cough from exposure to the elements.

Asked how the rescuers got wind of their situation, Mandresa said she didn’t know but her neighbors told her they would be rescued.

She said she was losing hope when rescue finally arrived.

Safe for now, Mandresa said she and her family had no plans of returning to their home in the mountains and had no idea where to go. What mattered for now was that they were safe and together, she said.