Landslide At The Neighborhood Killed At Least 20… A Testimony…
Buyagan, La Trinidad, Benguet, Philippines — With intermittent power supply and internet connection interruption for a week, the night of October 8th had the strongest downpour of rain and total power failure brought about by Typhoon Parma (Pepeng) when it hit Northern Philippines. We can’t get online to work so we went to bed early.
Around 8am in the morning of October 9th, my companions in the mission house were rushing to the nearby neighborhood, a few meters away from our apartment. Wearing my orange upper raincoat, i went after and what lies ahead of me is a huge landslide with massive building debris cutting the road.
[SIDENOTE: Click on image to enlarge.]
With government and civilian rescuers I, Nelson and Ptr. Andres joined the rescue team despite continuous heavy downpour.
What I thought at first was we’re clearing the road from the stones, debris, and moving the mud out of it. However, while conversing with with the man beside me, we are “actually” digging out two rescuers who had been buried on our spot while they were trying to rescue one family that was trapped!
Realizing that we may be able to rescue any survivors… shivers from cold, hunger and with hands and feet turning grey have not put me from non-stop digging and moving of stones and flowing mud.
Oh, I mentioned my feet turning grey as I only wore rubber sandals and shorts, not expecting to take part in the rescue labor in consideration of my heart condition; and which is an act I have never done before and a calamity I had never witnessed personally before my very eyes.
But with His protection, I was in perfect health after 4 hours in the field.
Wondering if Trishabella is in the field? Yes, she is! She’s the one who took a pic of me (in orange coat) on my once rest. They were not allowed to go near the spot we’re digging to because of the hanging house (in the pics) that might at anytime continue to fall. Everytime we hear crackling sounds from the house’ spot, we’re running out and after a few seconds -back again digging.
Nelson is in the field too. Not expecting as well to be in the field, he’d only wore a sweatshirt and pyjamas! He was not with us with Ptr. Andres into digging as he’d only wore slippers. Going to the spot where we are would bury his feet knee-high! They are lined up passing stones, rocks, and debris. (Photo at the bottom.)
Without eating breakfast, we went back home for lunch and continuously new batches of rescuers were arriving. So far nothing undesirable happened to us. Ptr. Andres (my spiritual dad) had a cut on his hand from the roof sheets.
Though it’s sad that we were not able to rescue any survivors, it’s comforting for us though to have been part of digging up 3 victims who were not able to survive.
What left us into trauma is to discover that death toll on the landslide, which is a “few meters away” from our apartment, counts to more than 20 people including families of both children and parents that were buried…
REALIZATION POINT: It’s really different when love and passion moves. Although the victims were in no way related with us, the love of neighbor will surpass any limits moving you to take action despite health conditions and possible danger…
*FYI, Nelson and Trishabella are my coworkers. The three of us are working online to support the mission oureaches. All of us resides in the mission house as well.
