Philippine rescuers dig deep for landslide missing

Via www.afp.com

By Afp news

Philippine rescuers dug through rock and mud Friday looking for people feared buried by a deadly landslide at a remote gold miningcommunity, as officials vowed to shut down unsafe mine sites.

At least 25 people were killed on Mindanao island before dawn on Thursday when a rock and mud avalanche buried a mountain settlement of gold prospectors who had refused to leave an area declared too dangerous for habitation.

However, the national government began to back away from the previous official figure of 150 people missing, saying only eight of them are known by name and there were no reliable census figures at the gold rush site.

"I think that is exaggerated," civil defence chief Benito Ramos told AFP, adding the original estimate was given by local officials in the area who extrapolated the figure from the number of buried shanties.

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Philippines to shut some mines after landslide

yahoo.com

Via www.ap.org

By AP news

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine government on Friday ordered the shutdown of gold-mining tunnels threatened by landslides in a southern town where a chunk of a mountain tumbled down on sleeping residents, killing at least 27 people.

The landslide struck hours before dawn Thursday on a mountain dotted with mine shafts and crude shanties with corrugated metal roofs in Napnapan village in Compostela Valley province.

It was the area's second deadly landslide in a year — 20 people were killed in a neighboring village last April — and prompted the environment secretary to call for curbing permits in the region's small-scale gold-mining industry.

Authorities in Pantukan township, where Napnapan village is located, expect to complete a survey next week that will indicate where landslides are likely to happen. Mines that sit in the danger zone will be ordered shut, and the workers and their families living on the mountain will be relocated, said Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo.

Robredo, who flew over the village in a military helicopter Friday, also ordered that gold ore processing be moved from Napnapan village to the town center so that the miners' families don't have to live with them near the mines.

"It will be more expensive, but it will be more safe," he said. "I am sure there will be resistance — that's why this will be enforced by the armed forces and the police."

There are an estimated 1,000 mining tunnels in Pantukan, Robredo said.

Mine shafts honeycomb the hills and mountains in Pantukan, making them unstable and causing frequent accidents. The area is a magnet for the poor and the unemployed who do not have any training in mining but hope to strike it rich in a country where the poorest live on about one dollar a day. The miners dig for gold with basic implements — pickaxes and iron bars — and carry the ore in sacks on their backs.

Pantukan town spokesman Arnulfo Lantayan told The Associated Press that five more bodies were recovered Friday, bringing to 27 the number of confirmed fatalities. Three of the dead were sisters, aged 6-14.

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