SAN FRANCISCO, Agusan del Sur (MindaNews / 12 May) – Landslide allegedly brought about by earthquake-induced cracks on an old tailings storage facility, struck a gold mining village in Mainit, Surigao del Norte at around 5 p.m on Saturday, burying several houses but no casualties were reported because a preemptive evacuation had been enforced hours earlier.
Local government officials and executives of Greenstone Resources Corporation (GRC), said the affected residents were safely evacuated to the municipal gymnasiums of Tubod and Mainit hours before the slide.
In a telephone interview, Kaycee Crisostomo, GRC Communications Director, said they are still determining how many houses were destroyed by the slide coming from Tailings Storage Facility 3 (TSF 3).
He said the company responded immediately to evacuate affected residents after receiving reports of cracks on the backfilled portion of the TSF 3. He said the company does not use this storage facility.
One of the houses destroyed by the May 11 landslide in the mining village of Siana in Mainit, Surigao del Norte. Photo courtesy of SHAIRA OCON
The Surigao City–based radio station, RPN-DXKS, said 55 families whose houses were along the landslide’s path, were evacuated to the Tubod Municipal Gym.
An hour after the incident, Surigao del Norte Lyndon Barbers visited the landslide site in Barangay Siana in Mainit and was told there were no casualties.
A resident whose house was buried said they ran and sought refuge at a higher ground called Purok Hilltop, a few minutes before the landslide.
The resident, who requested not to be named, told MindaNews it took them minutes to decide because the slide was initially slow in moving towards lower ground.
Another resident, Inday Udtohan, told Tirso Clerigo Jr. , head news anchor of RPN-DXKS, that they started to get scared when they saw the concrete road burst from a crack as early as 7 a.m., its debris hitting the side of the road.
Udtohan said their house was not affected but she evacuated in the afternoon as the slide started moving towards their village.
Crisostomo explained in a press statement that the TSF 3 was constructed by Australian firm, Red 5, on top of an older tailings storage facility built by mining company, Suricon, in the 1990s.
“The original facility was designed by Knight Piésold & Co. , makers of the strongest and largest dams in the world, followed by structural work managed in-house by Red5 itself which certified the structure as safe and dry,” Crisostomo explained.
But Udtohan said that during a meeting in March, she had brought to the attention of the GRC management that the mounds of “backfill” waste from the TSF 3 was already too high that it already posed danger to them who were living at the foot of the hill.
Landslide victims visit their homes a day after the May 11 landslide in Siana, Mainita Surigao del Norte. Photo courtesy of SHAIRA OCON
GRC said the company’s in-house experts attribute the “lateral adjustment of old Suricon tailings (TSF 3) to the recent seismic activity which they claimed was a magnitude 4.
A check at the website of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) for earthquakes in Surigao del Norte shows that a magnitude 3.8 earthquake was recorded 4:35 a.m. of May 10, or a day before the incident, with epicenter 88 kilometers away, way beyond Siargao Island. The closer quake with a magnitude of 2.7 was recorded at 8:20 a.m. of the same day, 44 kilometers to the West.
There was a magnitude 4 earthquake, but the epicenter, somewhere off the coast of Hinatuan in Surigao del Sur, is about 200 kilometers southeast of Siana. PHIVOLCS noted in its bulletins that there were no expected damage due to the recent quakes in both Surigao provinces.
The company also said that “months of torrential intermittent rains that caused several landslides in the island of Mindanao due to repeated expansion and contraction of topsoil also contributed to the instability of TSF 3,” apparently referring to the heavy rainfall in the early part of the year.
But Mainit has been suffering from high temperatures due to El Nino. No heavy rain has been reported recently in this town in Surigao del Norte in Caraga region.
The region has been suffering from heat indices in their 40s. (Chris V. Panganiban / MindaNews)
