Last Friday's trash slide in Rodriguez town in Rizal province that buried at least three people highlighted once more the danger faced by people—sometimes whole families—who make a living out of scavenging trash.
Dave Petley, executive director of the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Durham University in the United Kingdom, wrote on his blog that trash slides usually occur in less developed countries where a number of people make a living scavenging garbage, looking for objects—bottles, mineral water containers, plastic cups—that could be sold in junk shops.
He said those buried in the dump often die due to toxic gases released by the garbage. Petley added that garbage may also generate heat, causing hyperthermia.
“Life in such an environment is hard – garbage dumps are by definition unhealthy places that are also physically dangerous. Ironically, of course, these people are performing a valuable public service by recycling metals, plastics, etc., from which the rest of us benefit,” Petley wrote on his personal blog in 2008.
Of all trash slides in recent Philippine history, the one that occurred in July 2000 was the deadliest. In this incident, more than 500 people living on the slums of Payatas were buried alive when a mountain of garbage collapsed due to typhoon Edeng. Only 150 dead bodies were recovered.
The Irisan trash slide in Baguio City last August 2011 occurred when Typhoon Mina flooded the dumpsite and caused a retaining wall to collapse, sending an avalanche of trash down on the community below. At least five people, two of them children, were buried.
The following month, Typhoon Pedring triggered a landslide at Barangay New Cabalan in Olongapo City, killing a woman and her one-year-old daughter.
As of Monday, April 22, authorities were sifting through the trash that avalanched in Brgy. San Isidro in Rodriguez, Rizal, last Friday afternoon in hope of finding the three people reportedly buried there. Rescuers, however, were no longer optimistic that a survivor will be found.
Monday 22 April 2013
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/304979/news/nation/trash-slides-common-in-less-developed-countries-like-phl
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