news: landslide leaves 8 dead in northern Luzon

By PJAMES on October 1, 2007 4:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yahoo news India, via IANS is reporting the following (excerpt below)

By IANS
Sunday September 30, 06:23 PM

Manila, Sep 30 (Xinhua) Eight people were buried alive in a landslide triggered by tropical storm that washed away residential houses in a village in northern Philippines.

The victims were members of two families living in Ifugao, a mountainside village. A 9-year-old boy was the lone survivor of the two families.

Floods, caused by tropical depression 'Hanna' (locally named 'Lekima') also affected 350 families in the neighbouring Kalinga province, in northern Philippines.
Full Story Here from Yahoo News India

Please keep these people in your thoughts & prayers, as this is unfortunately a common occurance throughout many mountainous regions in the Philippines, where poor people live very simply without running water, electricity, phone service, etc.

Pictured below, a mountain village in Cebu I visit when I can (not the landslide area in the news), but the communities live the same way, without very many comforts at all.
...in the homes I'm invited to stay in, I eat what the locals eat (locally farmed veggies & native chicken [small & very tough, but a great meal after the long climb up the mountain]) and sleep on the same bamboo floors they sleep on.

Right before sunrise, the Families here head out for a 20 minute trek across the mountain to the closest local well and collect water for the day; hand carrying it back home in buckets & containers, a tremendous feat of strength and resilience in & of itself.

Anytime I think I've got it rough, I always think back to these people on the mountain who truly do have a rough life, and I'm humbled into silence, and rightly so.

I love learning from them, helping them with whatever I can do for them, and shooting as much as I can while I'm there.