At least two teenage boys were confirmed dead after a concrete wall collapsed on them during a heavy downpour in Quezon City yesterday afternoon.
The two still unidentified victims were residents of a slum community called “Halamanan-Kambingan” located at the end of Litex Road. The shanties were built above a creek where the concrete wall stood.
Superintendent Constante Agpaoa, commander of the Quezon City Police District Station 6, said the boys – both below 15 years old – were playing in the rain beside the creek at about 4:30 p.m. when the wall collapsed, the soil loosened by a road-widening project of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority along Commonwealth Avenue.
“Because of the heavy rains, they got washed away for about 100 meters from the site where the wall collapsed,” Agpaoa told The STAR in an interview.
The collapse also injured another teenager.
Agpaoa said while the road-widening activity has stopped, the MMDA has yet to cement portions of the road that had been excavated.
“They (MMDA personnel) did not consider the effect of those excavations on the intactness of the soil,” he added.