Child dies after being buried alive in landslide

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - A four-year-old son of a farmer perished Thursday night in a landslide in North Upi town following three days of incessant rains, local officials said.

In a statement Saturday, the local government North Upi identified the fatality as Ranin Tuniakao, who was buried alive when mud and boulders cascading from a nearby mountain covered their shanty in a farming enclave in Barangay Blensong.

“The side of the mountain was loosened by heavy rains,” North Upi Mayor Ramon Piang told reporters via text message.

Three members of the Tuniakao family, who were rescued ten hours later, were rushed to a hospital.

Low-lying areas around the town proper of North Upi, located in the first district of Maguindanao, were hit by flashfloods late Wednesday after more than six hours of heavy downpours.

The Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Relief Team (HEART) of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao said 86 barangays in Maguindanao’s Kabuntalan, Nothern Kabuntalan, Rajah Buayan, Datu Piang, Sultan sa Barongis, Datu Hofer, Montawal, Pagalungan, Ampatuan and Mamasapano towns are also flooded since Wednesday dawn.

Laisa Alamia, ARMM’s regional executive secretary, who is helping supervise the operation of HEART, said relief workers have been dispatched to the flooded areas to assess the situation of villagers and distribute relief rations.

The flooded Maguindanao towns are dotted with swamps and criss-crossed by rivers that connect to the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta, which easily overflows during rainy days.

The vast Liguasan Delta, located at the tri-boundary of North Cotabato, Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat provinces, is a catch basin of more than a dozen large rivers that spring from forested hinterlands in the three adjoining provinces and from Bukidnon and South Cotabato.

Nine barangays in Kabacan, North Cotabato are also underwater since Thursday.

The flooded barangays are located along rivers swelled by rains three days before.