TALISAY, Philippines — As a storm hit his rural home, Raynaldo Dejucos asked his wife and children to stay indoors and beware of possible lightning strikes, slippery roads or fever.

One thing the 36-year-old didn’t mention was landslides. In the lakeside town of Talisay in the northeastern Philippines, the 40,000 residents have never experienced them in their lives.

But after he left home last Thursday to check on his fish cages in nearby Taal Lake, an avalanche of mud, boulders and fallen trees cascaded down a steep ridge and buried about a dozen houses, including his.

Talisay, about 43 miles south of Manila, was one of several towns devastated by Tropical Storm Trami, the deadliest of 11 storms to hit the Philippines this year. The storm headed for Vietnam over the South China Sea after leaving at least 152 people dead and missing. More than 5.9 million people were in the path of the storm in the northern and central provinces.

“My wife was breastfeeding our 2-month-old baby,” Dejucos told The Associated Press on Saturday at a municipal basketball court, where the five white coffins of his entire family were placed side by side with those of a dozen other victims. . “My kids were holding each other on the bed when I found them.”

“I called my wife and our children’s names repeatedly. where are you Where are you?”

Disasters and migration to danger zones are a deadly mix

It’s the latest reality check in the Philippines, long considered one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries in the age of extreme climate change.

Located between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea, the Philippine archipelago is considered the gateway to about 20 typhoons and storms that pass through its 7,600 islands each year, some with devastating force. The nation of more than 110 million people also sits on the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’, home to many volcanic eruptions and most of the world’s earthquakes.

A deadly combination of increasingly destructive weather, blamed on climate change and economic desperation, which has forced people to live and work in previously off-limits disaster zones, has left many communities in South Asia -It’s waiting for disasters to happen. Villages have sprouted on landslide-prone mountain slopes, active volcano slopes, earthquake fault lines, and coastlines often inundated by tidal waves.

UN Under-Secretary-General Kamal Kishore, who heads the UN’s disaster mitigation agency, warned during a recent conference in the Philippines that disasters, including those caused by increasingly ferocious storms, threaten more people and could lead to derailing the region’s economic progress if governments do not invest more in disaster prevention.

A volcano city bears the brunt of the calamity

The picturesque resort of Talisay lies north of Taal, one of the country’s 24 most active volcanoes, set on an island in the middle of a lake. Fruit and vegetable farms have flourished on the fertile land, which is also a key tourist destination.

Thousands of poor settlers like Dejucos descended on Talisay over the decades, and its villages spread inland, away from the lake, toward a 32-kilometer (20-mile) long ridge with an average height of 600 meters (2,000 feet).

Fernan Cosme, a 59-year-old village councilor, told the AP that the towering ridge on Talisay’s northern fringes has never presented major risks, at least in his lifetime. The key concern has always been the volcano, which has been on and off since the 1500s.

“Many are taking risks,” Cosme said of the Talisay villagers, who have grown accustomed to Taal’s volatility and survived in its shadow.

Aaron Favila/AP/AP

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In 2020, Taal’s eruption displaced hundreds of thousands and sent ash clouds as far as Manila, closing its main international airport.

Kervin de Torres, a carpenter, wanted a safer community for his daughter Kisha, a high school student, but he and his wife separated and she bought a house near Talisay Ridge, where she lived with Kisha. His daughter was in the house when she was buried by the landslide. The mother survived.

A distraught de Torres showed his daughter’s picture to police officers who on Saturday searched for the last two missing people – Kisha and a child from another family.

Three hours later, a bulldozer unearthed school uniforms hanging from plastic hangers where Kisha was believed to have been buried by debris.

Dozens of police and volunteers dug furiously with shovels until a foot was seen in the mud. De Torres cried as the remains of a young girl were placed in a black body bag. He nodded when asked if she was his daughter. Teary-eyed residents expressed their sympathy.

Doris Echin, a 35-year-old mother, said she almost died when the mudslide swept her up to her waist as she walked out of her hut carrying her two daughters. She said she prayed hard and made it through.

Standing by her shack, which was half-buried in mud, as police and emergency personnel scoured the area with bulldozers and sniffer dogs, Echin worried about her family’s fate.

“If we move, where will we get the money to build a new house? Which employer will give us jobs?” she asked “If we rebuild and stay, we will be living between a volcano and a collapsing mountain.”

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