13 Tote bei Minenunglueck in den Cordilleren

Greetings!

I was the one to send the letters and information to friends abroad regarding the tragedy that happened in Kias, Baguio City. I am sorry for the delay . However, we are very thankful of the donation you collected and we are hopeful to receive it soon.

Of of today, 13 miners (all of them small-scale miners) were retrieved dead from different locations. One is still missing and the retrieval operation continues. 7 survivors are still recuperating in the hospital- Baguio General Hospital. The other 6 rescuers who met an accident along the way were also brought to the hospital but they are already home as of last Friday, last week.. But the 7 survivors are still in the hospital due to heavy physical damages.

We in the KMU-Cordillera are helping the victims through participating in the retrieval operations and the solicitation for the food and medicines for the victims as well as for the food of the many volunteers. The whole community is grieving because of this.

I, myself, together with my family is in the same community where the tragedy happened. We just lucky that our house is a bit far from Mount Emerald. (this is the place where the incident happened.) It is some 300 meters away from our house. If you remember my husband, Ignas, he used to work in that mountain as a small-scale or pocket miner some years ago.

These small-scale miners are not employed in a company so that they do not have any benefit or help to receive from any employer. They are however, organized into an association (where our urban poor organization- ORNUS-KADAMAY helped to organized). 

For the past week, I and Cristina have been busy going around soliciting food for the rescuers and medicines for the patients in the hospital. The others are also busy helping in the kitchen. This is because more than a hundred are volunteers for the retrieval operation. It is a lot of people to feed.

It is good also that the local government of Baguio City extended its help to shoulder the expenses of the dead people in the funeral homes and some for the survivors.

This is all for now. We will be sending updates later.

Thank you.

In behalf of KMU-Cordillera,

Leonida Tundagui