Guinsaugon Tragedy

19 February 2006

Unlike the series of ferryboat tragedies in recent years, the Philippine government should in no way be blamed for the appalling tragedy in Guinsaugon where it seems at least 1,800 people have died. The disaster struck in a relatively remote town on Leyte Island and the response of the authorities was all that it could have been in these circumstances.
Indeed, since the beginning of a series of catastrophic mudslides in recent years, starting with horrific events at Ormoc in 1991 w5,000 perished in flashfloods, government scientists have been doing all that they can to map and quantify the risk.

Unfortunately, establishing the level of hazard does not of itself avoid tragedy. As so often happens in poor countries, there are other factors at work here, human factors that compound the seriousness of a natural disaster. What has been happening in Leyte, as elsewhere in the world, is a steady encroachment of lowland people into the tropical forests of the fertile uplands. In order to eke out a living from this land, the newly arrived farmers clear the forests.

Just as serious have been the activities of illegal loggers who tear down trees leaving the farmers to remove the stumps and plant crops, typically coconut, on the cleared land.

The problem is that the ancient forest used to bind together the soil on the mountainsides. In a region like Leyte, regular seismic activity has already fractured the rock. The heavy rainfall of the regular typhoon season between May and November used to cause mudslides even when the forest canopy was there to assist rain runoff and bind the soil together. Without the forest, there is effectively nothing to avoid disaster. And worse is the continuing climatic change that exacerbates the impact. More than 20 inches of rain had fallen on Leyte in the 16 days before the mountainside collapsed. The trigger may well have been a mild earthquake.

Those who are not familiar with the realities of the area may be tempted to say that the disaster that overtook the people of Guinsaugon was largely of their own making. It will be unfair. It is wrong to blame the poor people for seizing an dangerous opportunity to win themselves a living from the cleared land is another question.

Hopefully this latest tragedy will cause other communities similar to Guinsaugon to review the risks to which their farming activities have exposed them. At the very least, many villages may need to be relocated further away from danger, as the government has been doing east of Manila, following destructive mudslides there in 2004. Farmers will just have to travel further to their fields. It may in some cases be practical to encourage the tropical forest to re-establish itself to lessen the danger with a buffer zone. Some communities, however, may need to be abandoned altogether.

It will be a tough call both for the government and the people involved but it must be done to avoid further catastrophes like this.