TALISAY, Philippines – When a storm hit his rural home, Raynaldo Dejucos asked his wife and children to stay home and avoid possible lightning strikes, slippery roads or catching fire.

One thing the 36-year-old man didn’t mention was the landslides. In the lakeside town of Talisay in the northeastern Philippines, 40,000 people have never had this experience in their lives.

But after he left his home last Thursday to check the fish cages at nearby Taal Lake, an avalanche of mud, rocks and fallen trees descended a steep ridge and buried nearly a dozen homes, including his own.

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

“My wife was breastfeeding our 2-month-old baby,” Dejucos told The Associated Press on Saturday at the city hall’s basketball court, where his entire family’s five white coffins were placed side by side with the coffins of a dozen other victims. “When we found my children, they were hugging each other in bed.”

“I was saying the names of my wife and our children over and over again. Where are you? Where are you?”

Disasters and migration to dangerous areas are a deadly mix

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

The Philippine archipelago, located between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea, is considered the gateway to approximately 20 typhoons and storms that pass through 7,600 islands every year, some of which have destructive power. This country, with a population of more than 110 million, is also located in the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where many volcanic eruptions and most of the world’s earthquakes occur.

A lethal mix of increasingly devastating weather conditions blamed on climate change and economic desperation forcing people to live and work in previously off-limits disaster zones keeps many communities in Southeast Asia waiting for disasters to occur. Villages have sprouted on landslide-prone mountain slopes, active volcano slopes, earthquake fault lines, and along coastlines often inundated by tidal waves.

UN Under-Secretary-General Kamal Kishore, who heads the UN disaster mitigation agency, warned at a recent conference in the Philippines that disasters, including those caused by increasingly intense storms, threaten more people and could derail the region’s economic progress if governments fail to act . Don’t invest more in disaster prevention.

A volcano town bears the brunt of the disaster

The picturesque resort town of Talisay is located north of Taal, one of the country’s 24 most active volcanoes, located on an island in the middle of a lake. Fruit and vegetable farms have developed in the fertile lands, which are also an important tourism center.

Over the decades, thousands of poor settlers like the Dejucos flocked to Talisay, and their villages expanded inland from the lake, up a 32-kilometer (20-mile) long ridge with an average elevation of 600 meters (2,000 feet).

Village councilor Fernan Cosme, 59, told the AP that the high ridge at the northern end of Talisay had never posed a major risk, at least not in his lifetime. The main concern has always been the volcano, which has remained intermittently dormant since the 1500s.

“A lot of people are taking risks,” Cosme said of Talisay villagers who have become accustomed to Taal’s instability and survive in its shadow.

Aaron Favila/AP / AP

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

Carpenter Kervin de Torres wanted a safer community for his daughter Kisha, a high school student, but he and his wife separated and he bought a house near the Talisay ridge where he lived with Kisha. Her daughter, who was buried under the ground due to the landslide, was at home. The mother survived.

A distraught de Torres showed her daughter’s photo to police officers searching for the last two missing people on Saturday: Kisha and a baby from another family.

Three hours later, at a spot where Kisha was believed to have been buried by debris, a digger dug up school uniforms hanging from plastic hangers.

Dozens of police and volunteers dug furiously with shovels until a foot was visible in the mud. De Torres cried as the remains of a young girl were placed in a black body bag. When asked if he had a daughter, he nodded. Old-eyed citizens expressed their sadness.

Mother Doris Echin, 35, nearly died when a landslide submerged her waist-deep in water as she rushed out of her hut carrying her two daughters. He said he prayed a lot and barely managed to get through it.

Standing next to his hut, half buried in mud, Echin feared for the fate of his family as police and emergency personnel searched the area with diggers and search dogs.

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

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