At least 28 people have died after a landfill collapsed in the central Philippines last week, the police in Cebu City said on Friday, as rescuers continued searching for eight people still missing.
Dozens of people were buried when the landslide of trash occurred on Jan. 9 at a private landfill in Binaliw, a mountainous area outside Cebu City.
Lt. Col. Jose Los Baños of the Cebu City police said on Friday that 18 people had been rescued, some of whom were taken to hospitals with injuries that were not critical.
Rescuers were focusing their efforts in an area where a facility belonging to Prime Waste Solutions Cebu, the landfill owner, was destroyed by the landslide, Colonel Los Baños said. Around 50 employees were in the facility at the time of the collapse, he added.
An electrical engineer, John Paul Apilan, was among those killed, Mayor Nestor Archival of Cebu City said on Tuesday in a social media post. Other victims have not been identified by the authorities.
The city has deployed 300 people and two large cranes to the rescue and recovery effort. At a news briefing on Monday, Mr. Archival said operations were moving slowly because rescuers had to dismantle a metal structure to proceed safely.
Investigators examining the cause of the collapse have interviewed survivors and relatives of the missing, Colonel Los Baños said. No criminal charges have been filed against Prime Waste Solutions Cebu.
Mr. Archival said last week that an initial investigation had suggested a link to a 6.9 magnitude earthquake in September. On Monday, however, he said that the landfill owner found no irregularities after the earthquake. Instead, Mr. Archival suggested that the garbage mound had collapsed under the weight of water from a typhoon that struck the central Philippines in November. “The landfill was like a sponge,” he said.
Prime Waste Solutions suspended operations at the Binaliw landfill after the collapse. Officials in Cebu — a city of around 1 million people that generates 500,000 kilograms of garbage a day — have been negotiating with neighboring cities and provinces to dispose of the waste, Mr. Archival said on Monday.
City officials expect the volume of garbage to nearly double this weekend, when millions of people are expected to attend Cebu’s annual Sinulog festival, which celebrates the arrival of Roman Catholicism through Spanish colonization. Local police have requested reinforcements from neighboring regions to help manage festival crowds and the landfill response, Colonel Los Baños said on Friday.
Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.
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