Search for teener in new Payatas tragedy fruitless

Overnight, neighbors, using only shovels and pick axes and aided by flashlights, looked for the remains of 16-year-old Roggee Baliwas, who was believed buried by smoldering trash after a slide hit a new heap of garbage beside the collapsed Payatas dump.

By early morning, their backs and arms sore from toil, the search party broke up defeated, unable to find any trace of the teenager.

"Another mountain of garbage, another tragedy," said Delia Badion, who heads an organization of survivors of the July 10 trash-slide tragedy, which killed at least 234 people and injured scores of others.

Police said the victim and his two friends, Franklyn Rezas, 16, and Joel Lalican, 17, were swimming in a creek running beside the heap of garbage, which now stands as tall as a five-storey building when he drowned.

But the survivors and their neighbors say they were picking recyclables when a huge block of loosely compacted garbage on top of the heap slid down under their feet. The survivors cheated death by jumping into the creek.

The dump was closed after the July 10 tragedy. But Mayor Ismael Mathay Jr. prevailed upon then President Joseph Estrada last Nov. 6 to reopen the dump so the local government could put up a temporary transfer station.

The station, he said, would serve as a half-way transit point for the city’s garbage trucks making the long haul to the re-commissioned landfill in San Mateo.

"It’s as if a new mountain has risen here overnight," said 22-year-old Marivic Grajo, who heads a resident’s association in Payatas. She said in less than three months, a mountain of garbage as tall as a five-storey building grew on the site, covering over a hectare of ground.

Residents now blame Mathay for the incident the other day. "All his claims that the controlled dumping is safe has been belied by the accident that has already snuffed out a teenager’s life," she said.

Badion said Mathay has a big interest at stake in the continued operation of the dump because his family owns the REN Transport Corp., the main garbage collection contractor hired by the city. The local chief executive has denied the charges. – Romel Bagares