TACLOBAN CITY- After almost 10 days after Baybay City and its nearby town of Abuyog, both in Leyte, were devastated by deadly landslide incidents, authorities will still continue their search, rescue, and retrieval (SRR) operations.
Col. Noel Vestuir, the commanding officer of the 802nd Infantry Brigade whose group of soldiers are part of the SRR along with other government security forces, said that they will continue their operations until they are ordered not to do so.
“As long as there is no order for us to stop, the AFP will continue its SRR,” Vestuir said in an interview.
“People still continue to hope that their loved ones could still be accounted for,” he added.
It was learned that the SRR group has employed K9 dogs to help them find bodies entombed by the avalanche.
Aside from the soldiers, also helping the SRR are police and members of the Bureau of Fire Protection aside from the personnel of the areas’ disaster risk reduction management offices.
On Monday morning, Vestuir said that they have found three dead bodies in Barangay Kantagnos, which appeared to be the worst-hit village in Baybay. This raised to 58 of its fatalities.
The city, in all, has now 118 fatalities with 70 missing individuals.
Vestuir said that his men are still in the villages which suffered landslide incidents due to the heavy rains dumped by tropical depression ‘Agaton’ that hit the city on April 10.
The Army officer, however, said that while they are carrying out their works, they also consider the safety of his men as the landslide-hit villages like Kantagnos remain to be hazardous.
He disclosed that a team from the Department of Health and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau went to Kantagnos to assess its condition as its safety and health.
Meantime, Abuyog Mayor Lemuel Gin Traya said that he will ask for the opinions of medical experts as to when the retrieval operations in Pilar will be called off.
“I will wait for the advice from our medical experts as to when we can stop our retrieval operations. But right now, we are focusing in our efforts in combing the coasts of Abuyog and (even) along Southern Leyte,” he said.
He stressed that considering of the current condition of Pilar, which was practically entombed by mud, boulders, and fallen trees, the rescuers are finding some difficulties in their operations.
So far, 48 residents of the village have been confirmed to have died with still 55 remain missing.

TACLOBAN CITY- The number of fatalities due to the multiple landslide incidents in Baybay City is expected to increase as its death toll has now reached 25 as of Tuesday afternoon.
Heavy rains continue to affect Baybay, a city of more than 111,000 inhabitants, which hampers continuous rescue and retrieval operations in villages hit by landslides.
The bad weather, spawned by tropical depression ‘Agaton’ has also resulted in the occurrence of landslides, the latest of which occurred in the village of Bidlinan which has 428 residents.
Melani Aboyme, a survivor, said that she could not believe that their village of Kantagnos was hit by a deadly landslide.
The 37-year old mother to three children said that she and some residents of the village went to the village evacuation in the afternoon of April 10 due to strong winds and heavy rains due to Agaton.
“But in the morning of the following day, we decided to return home thinking that the typhoon is over. But around 9 am, we heard a loud bang followed by a whirlpool. Then came a rush of mud with uprooted trees and boulders coming from the mountain. I don’t know what exactly happened next as my family went out of our house to seek shelter in a house located on a higher grounds,” Aboyme said in a phone interview.
While she and her husband, Quirimon,46, and their three children ages 15, 12, and 7, survived the onslaught of the landslide, they lost her niece, Marie Ashley Balicuatro,15.
According to her, Marie Ashley, was drifted by the raging landslide. Her brother, Aljun,12, survived. The siblings are with them as their parents are separated.
“We are really in shock and in despair. We never thought that this will happen to us. So many were dead in our village. My three young children could not sleep. A loud sound like even coming from a vehicle jolts them and makes them cry. They are now afraid of rain,” Aboyme said.
She said that as far as she knew, about 11 from their village have been confirmed to have died due to the three landslide incidents preceded by a whirlpool reason why the devastation in their village was massive.
At present, they are living in an evacuation center as they have lost their house.
“We have lost everything. We have no home to return to,” she said. She, her husband, and three children suffered bruises.
On Tuesday, soldiers from the 802d Infantry Brigade headed by Col. Noel Vestuir were able to rescue 73 residents of Kantagnos, which is located more than two kms away from the city proper. Based on the Philippine Statistics Authority, the village has 605 residents
Based on the report from the Baybay Emergency Response Team (Beru), the number of deaths is now at 22 of which 11 were women.
However, Rep. Carl Cari, who is from Baybay City, said that the death toll has now reached to 25 as of Tuesday afternoon.
Marisa Cano, head of the rescue group, said that the number of missing persons due to the deadly and multiple landslides has now reached to 27- 21 from Barangay Bunga; five from Can-ipa, and one from Guadalupe.
“We do hope that the number of fatalities will not increase but considering of the (big) number of missing persons, there is a possibility that it might increase,” Cano said in a phone interview.
According to her, rescue and retrieval operations are hampered by the continuous rains being experienced in the city and the difficulties in going to the affected villages due to landslides or flooding.
They have also monitored 105 people who were injured due to the rain-induced landslides of which 51 of them were admitted to various hospitals in the city.
The rest were out-patients one of them was a personnel of the city fire who helped in the rescue operations.
The flooding and landslide incidents have resulted in the dislocation of 3,721 families or 12,816 individuals in Baybay City.
Meantime, the deadly incidents resulted in several fund drives and donations coming from both public and private sectors amid calls from the city government and provincial officials headed by Vice Gov.Carlo Loreto who is from Baybay City.
Several local government units like Ormoc City have deployed their rescue groups to Baybay to help in the rescue and retrieval operations.
The Palo Archdiocese, meantime, asked the public not to give donations easily as they reported that some unscrupulous individuals have used the tragedy to ask for money.(WITH ROEL T. AMAZONA)