Non-stop heavy rain for more than a month have sarurated the soil with water too much.
z_graeden once again. The Cordillera's has a mountainous topography located North of Luzon. With Baguio,Benguet most prone to storms due to it's location is also highly expose to calamities immense rainfall.
The same feeling of anxiety envelope me during times like this. Learning about an incoming typhoon is really a pain to me. I never felt anything like this since we moved to my hub's house.
I bore my daughter on 15th of October, during tropical storm Karen. Then, typhoon Lawin made a landfall on the 19th which caused a huge destruction at the main town, causing the loss of some homes along the river banks and the partial destruction of the jumbo bridge along Chico River, Bontoc. Thank goodness I birthed earlier and not later because the fear I have felt before was incomparable. Angry howls of winds whipping rain though our galvanized "dingding." It makes the house go wiggle.
On mid September, 2018, tropical cyclone Ompong with an international name typhoon Mangkhut took the lives of more or less 100 in the Cordillera region. It was the strongest typhoon in the world that time.
It had been raining for almost a month due to monsoon rain. The region was mainly affected by the typhoon specially Benguet province with Itogon who suffered and endured the most. The place has lots of small-scale mining which makes it not a suitable place for vegetation.
It was during the night when everyone's supposed to be sleeping that the disaster happened. Huge landslide goes along with debris flows and earth flows taking with it the shanties of small-scale miners which the miners were occupying that night.
One barangay of Bontoc also endured the pain of lossing a number of 6 from a family during the onslaught of the typhoon. Their house was concrete but was destroyed by a landslide and killed six. If my memry serves me right, 2 of the children survived.
After Ompong was Rosita which also led a great devastation on our province.
Being a direct path of typhoons which usually hit Northern and Central Luzon, Benguet and its neighboring provinces along the Cordillera's makes it vulnerable to monsoon rains. It causes landslides and floods to other areas.
Even on our place, Mountain Province was a victim of numerous road slides which pose danger to residents and motorists passing.
The Cordillera's is rich in both natural and mineral resources which makes the latter an option for a living but destroying mother nature. But, we are thankful that we never were deceived by greedy minds of people trying to take hold on our place's mineral. It can be read on Xzeon's article, "Mining in the Philippines."
Going back with the Itogon tragedy, the small-scale mining may be a contributory factor in the incident but not a major factor that caused the landslide because there are other factors that aggravated it such as the month long downpour which accumulated large volume of water into the soil. Mining not to blame for Itogon tragic landslide.
I was reminded of this incident because this gloomy,rainy weather brought me back the feeling specially with typhoon Rolly which made a major destruction in the Bicol region.. Super typhoon Rolly, international name typhoon Goly is the strongest storm in the world this year. It was comparable with super typhoon Haiyan or locally known as Yolanda in 2013.
May we all pray for our brothers' safety during this time of pandemic that the virus would not do them any harm while they try to get back on their lives.
Typhoon Rolly is already out of the Philippines Area of Responsibility (PAR) but tropical cyclone Siony has now entered the PAR which is moving North bound Luzon. I hope that it's not a destructive one that it will become weaker when it makes its landfall and would just pass and go.
The Philippines is located along the typhoon belt along the Pacific making it prone to storms with an average of 20 storms a year, 5 of which are destructive. Because of heavy rains and strong winds which leads to flooding to flat, low areas while causing landslides to mountainous areas, it results to destruction of crops and properries as well as lives.
While human factors add up to triggering agent of any calamities, so does natural factors. All we have to do is to protect mother nature, as it will protect us back from natural phenomena.
Stay safe everyone..
all photos used are from facebook, CTTO
z_graeden
I worry for siony too but it doesn't affect ncr that much. The only time i ever actually felt the storm was when yokanda and ondoy hit but besides that, there was just minor flooding. Nothing like a landslide of this magnitude