The Philippine National Red Cross (PRC) reported that a two-month-old boy and a three-year-old girl were rescued from a landfill site Friday in Barangay Masar, Maco, Davao de Oro, two days following a massive landslide that struck the village Tuesday night.
PRC Rescue Team leader Van Solinap said the two were immediately taken to the Doctors Community Hospital in Mawab by the PRC Emergency Medical Services team.
“I am proud of you for your hard work and persistence to recover every missing person from the landslide. Thank you, Van and team, for bringing hope amid despair and showing that PRC is always first, always ready, always there,” PRC Chairman and CEO Richard Gordon said as he expressed joy over the development.
Gordon congratulated the PRC Rescue Team led by Solinap for their “untiring commitment to help.”
Gordon said that the PRC team would continuously work to help the people in the area.
For her part, Secretary-General Dr. Gwen Pang said the PRC Team has been on the ground even before the landslide. “We thank the team for their unequalled service,” said Dr. Pang.
Reports from Davao de Oro said rescuers dug up a child alive from the debris, raising hopes for more survivors underneath the pile of soil and rocks.
“A miraculous little girl survived the landslide hit Zone 1, Barangay Masara, Maco. This baby was ‘captured’ this morning during an ongoing search, rescue, and retrieval operation by our first responders. So far, this child’s condition is confirmed to be stable after receiving proper medical attention by doctors and nurses at the hospital,” the provincial government posted on its website on Friday.
The race for survivors though remained tight and tense, as casualties and missing persons also continued to climb.
The death now stood at 15 and the number of missing persons also climbed to 109. Thirty-one of the victims earlier escaped the slide, but they were rushed to different clinics and hospitals for treatment of their injuries.
Some 1,166 families were evacuated.
Aerial photographs of the landslide area indicated a massive slide of one of the mountain slopes of Barangay Masara, where a mining company has been operating for several years although officials of the municipality of Maco dismissed that mining could not have been the reason.
A town disaster official quoted on national television said the area was forested and it was most likely the torrential rains that poured nonstop for days this week had loosened the soil.
It could not be immediately ascertained how wide was the area of the landslide and how long was the stretch of the road was covered by the slide when it struck at between 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Tuesday.
Three buses that carried workers of the mining company, and a still unaccounted number of smaller vehicles were buried in the slide. The debris also smashed several houses along the slope and in the valley.
Video footage uploaded by witnesses in the area revealed that people were shouting “withdraw” to residents in the area moments before the landslide. Posts in the social media have also blamed the victims for not heeding warnings in the morning before the incident about the likelihood of a landslide as shown by rockfall early Tuesday.