Worry about the squatters

2006 Leyte Mudslide


If you look out of the window in this video, and listen carefully, you can hear the strong wind pounding on the trees and the rain pouring down.

It has been raining for a week, and in the past 24 hours, the sky just opened up and have been dumping rain non-stop. Looking out of the window, there are squatter houses all over our neighbourhood, in fact, our helper's family live in a squatter house just about 10 minutes walking distance from us. Above those squatter houses is a big hill, where the government has started about a year ago digging away the dirt to make a road. Though we haven't see much activities for a while, they still claim that they are working on the road.

Sitting in our office room, we can see clearing a big area with red dirt that was dug out with no vegetation on it. With the rain coming down like this, it won't take long until the soil is saturated and comes sliding down.

A huge mudslide in Leyte, Philippines in 2006 that buried the whole village was still fresh in my memories. The causes for that mudslide were a 10 day period of heavy rains and a minor earthquake. 12 days ago, we experienced a small earthquake here in Cebu. It seems like the ground underneath us is not that stable.

If anything happen, we will be fine, it is the squatters that I am worry about. Lord, please protect them from another Leyte disaster.