TALISAY, Philippines (AP) — As a storm battered his rural home under a ridge with rain and wind, Raynaldo Dejucos asked his wife and five children to stay indoors and protect themselves from lightning, slippery roads or fever.

One thing the 36-year-old fish pen worker didn’t mention was landslides. In the lakeside town of Talisay in the northeast of the Philippines, the 40,000 inhabitants have never experienced it in their lifetime.

About four hours after he left home mid-morning last Thursday to check his fish cages in nearby Taal Lake, an avalanche of rainwater, mud, rocks and toppled trees poured onto the steep ridge behind his house and buried a dozen houses, including his.

Talisay, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) south of Manila, was one of several towns ravaged by Tropical Storm Trami – the deadliest of 11 storms to hit the Philippines this year. The storm headed toward Vietnam across the South China Sea after leaving at least 126 people dead and missing. More than 5.7 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 Saturday at a city basketball gymnasium, where the five white coffins of his entire family lay side by side with those of a dozen other victims of landslides. “My children were holding each other on the bed when we found them.”

“I was repeatedly calling out the names of my wife and our children. Where are you? Where are you?”

Natural disasters and migration to dangerous areas: a deadly mix

It is a new cause for concern in Talisay and a final reminder of the reality in the Philippines, long considered one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, in an era of extreme climate change .

Located between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea, the Philippine archipelago is considered the gateway to around 20 typhoons and storms that sweep across its 7,600 islands each year, some with devastating force. . This country of more than 110 million inhabitants is also located in the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where many volcanic eruptions and most earthquakes in the world occur.

A deadly mix of increasingly destructive weather blamed on climate change and economic desperation that has forced people to live and work in previously off-limits disaster zones has left many Southeast Asian communities waiting for disasters happen. Villages sprang up on landslide-prone mountainsides, on the slopes of active volcanoes, on seismic fault lines, and on coastlines often inundated by tidal surges.

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 severe storms, more violent, threaten more people and could derail the region’s economic progress if governments do not act. I am not investing more in disaster prevention.

A volcanic city bears the brunt of the calamity

Talisay and neighboring towns are already warning signs.

This picturesque resort town lies north of Taal, one of the country’s 24 most active volcanoes, nestled on a small island in the middle of a lake. Fruit and vegetable farms have thrived on these fertile lands, which are also a key tourist destination.

Thousands of poor settlers like Dejucos descended on Talisay over the decades and its villages expanded inland, moving away from the lake toward a 32-kilometer-long ridge with an average height of 600 meters.

Fernan Cosme, a 59-year-old village councilor, told the AP that the imposing ridge surrounding Talisay’s northern fringe never posed a major risk, at least during its lifetime. The main concern has always been the volcano, which has been agitated intermittently since the 1500s.

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

In 2020, Taal’s eruption displaced hundreds of thousands of people and sent clouds of ash all the way to Manila, closing the 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 without him. Kisha was in the house when she was buried by the landslide. The mother survived.

A distraught De Torres showed his daughter’s photo to police who searched Saturday for the last two missing people – Kisha and a baby from another family.

Three hours later, a backhoe unearthed school uniforms hanging from plastic hangers, at a spot where Kisha was believed to have been buried under a mound of mud, rocks and debris.

Dozens of police officers and volunteers dug furiously with shovels until a foot emerged from the mud. De Torres watched anxiously and cried as the remains of a young girl were lifted and placed in a black body bag. He nodded when asked if it was his daughter. Teary-eyed residents expressed sympathy as he followed police officers transporting the girl’s remains to a morgue for identification.

Doris Echin, a 35-year-old mother, said she nearly died when the mudslide submerged her to the waist as she rushed out of her hut, carrying her two daughters. She said she prayed hard and managed to get through it.

Standing next to his cabin, half buried in mud in what looked like a wasteland as police and emergency workers searched it with three backhoes and sniffer dogs, Echin worried about the fate of his family.

“If we move, where will we find the money to build a new house? Which employer will give us work?” » she asked. “If we manage to rebuild and stay, we will live between a volcano and a ruined mountain. »

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Associated Press journalists Aaron Favila and Vicente Gonzales contributed to this report.

Jim Gomez, Associated Press