Death toll rises to 28 after landfill collapse in the Philippines

At least 28 people have died after a landfill collapsed in the central Philippines last week, police in Cebu City said on Jan 16, as rescuers continued searching for eight people still missing.

Dozens of people were buried when the landslide of trash occurred on Jan 9 at a private landfill in Binaliw, a mountainous area outside Cebu City.

Lieutenant-Colonel Jose Los Banos of the Cebu City police said on Jan 16 that 18 people had been rescued, some of whom were taken to hospitals with injuries that were not critical.

Rescuers were focusing their efforts in an area where a facility belonging to Prime Waste Solutions Cebu, the landfill owner, was destroyed by the landslide, Lt-Col Los Banos said. Around 50 employees were in the facility at the time of the collapse, he added.

An electrical engineer, Mr John Paul Apilan, was among those killed, Mayor Nestor Archival of Cebu City said on Jan 13 in a social media post. Other victims have not been identified by the authorities.

The city has deployed 300 people and two large cranes to the rescue and recovery effort. At a news briefing on Jan 12, Mr Archival said operations were moving slowly because rescuers had to dismantle a metal structure to proceed safely.

Investigators examining the cause of the collapse have interviewed survivors and relatives of the missing, Lt-Col Los Banos said. No criminal charges have been filed against Prime Waste Solutions.

Mr Archival said last week that an initial investigation had suggested a link to a 6.9-magnitude earthquake in September. On Jan 12, however, he said the landfill owner found no irregularities after the earthquake. Instead, he suggested that the garbage mound had collapsed under the weight of water from a typhoon that struck the central Philippines in November. “The landfill was like a sponge,” he said.

Prime Waste Solutions suspended operations at the Binaliw landfill after the collapse. Officials in Cebu – a city of around one million people that generates 500,000kg of garbage a day – have been negotiating with neighbouring cities and provinces to dispose of the waste, Mr Archival said on Jan 12.

City officials expect the volume of garbage to nearly double this weekend, when millions of people are expected to attend Cebu’s annual Sinulog festival, which celebrates the arrival of Roman Catholicism through Spanish colonisation.

Local police have requested reinforcements from neighbouring regions to help manage festival crowds and the landfill response, Lt-Col Los Banos said on Jan 16. NYTIMES