Almost one week after a disastrous landslide hit a gold mining site in Maco, Davao de Oro, burying some houses and vehicles, the death toll from the disaster is now 55.

As of 7 a.m. on Monday, the Maco government said 32 people were injured, while validation for the tally of the missing individuals and unidentified bodies is ongoing. Meanwhile, 63 individuals were declared missing on Sunday.

SAR to SRR operation

In a radio interview on Monday, a provincial officer said that the Incident Command Post shifted to search, rescue, and retrieval, or SRR operation, from doing search and rescue, or SAR, work in the past days.

“Since the landslide occurred until the 48-hour period, it was decided by Governor [Dorothy Montejo-Gonzaga] with the meeting with the mayor to extend the search and rescue operation. But yesterday, the Incident Command Post already shifted to search, rescue, and retrieval operations," said Davao de Oro executive assistant on information and communications, Edward Macapili.

He said that the SRR operations are ongoing amid interruptions such as the continuous scowing of the soil in the hard-hit area, where currently around 300 rescuers from different disaster teams are present.

Moreover, Macipili said that SRR operations have no timeline.

“The [ICP] wants to continue with the rescue and retrieval to give justice to the claims of the relatives of the victims,” he said. “Because they were complaining to the ICP and asking... they really want to find their relatives.

Besides the ICP, Macipili said there is also a management team for the dead, which caters to the concerns of families with missing relatives.

“As [far] as the evacuees are concerned, in fact, there is an area that has been created for the children that is continuously counseled by the PSWD (Provincial Social Welfare and Development), because the children have traumas as well as the adults."

The rain-induced landslide hit on February 6 at 7:40 p.m. at the mining village in Zone 1, Bgy. Masara, Maco.

Over the past few weeks, the Davao Region has been impounded by rains due to the combined effects of the northeast monsoon and the trough of the low-pressure area.

On Sunday, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council reported that the rain-induced floods and landslides in Mindanao have so far registered infrastructure damages valued at P738.6 million, with the Caraga region logging the highest with 32 infrastructure damages amounting to P473 million.