NHA asked to relocate 300 Baguio residents Philippine Daily Inquirer
November 08, 2009
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines—The National Housing Authority has been asked to look for relocation sites for 300 Baguio residents displaced by recent landslides and typhoons.
Mayor Reinaldo Bautista said, the city government is also preparing another list for people living in areas endangered by future landslides.
He said the list has been sent to Federico Laxa, NHA general manager, on the instruction of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Mrs. Arroyo last month ordered Bautista to address the risks posed by ground instability that date back to the 1990 Luzon earthquake.
Geologists discovered fractures in sections of Baguio when the city was devastated by the earthquake.
Landslides unleashed by rains dumped in October by Tropical Depression “Pepeng” have provided geologists better information about the geological foundation of some villages here, said Fay Apil, chief geologist of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau.
But she said the information should not create fear because the ground weaknesses are natural to communities lying on steep sloping terrain.
Engineering technology allows housing developers to design houses suited for mountain settlements, like the Cordillera, she said.
The city government imposed a policy in 1990 restricting building heights to only four stories in light of the geological weaknesses, but it was no longer enforced 10 years later because of this technology, said Alexander Payumo, acting Cordillera director of the Land Management Service. The LMS is an attached agency of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
Urban planners like retired City Architect Joseph Alabanza have been pushing for Baguio’s decongestion as early as 1991, saying ground weaknesses reinforce the theory that Baguio has breached its natural resource carrying capacity.
Alabanza, a former presidential adviser on urban planning during the Ramos administration, conceived a plan to disperse settlements and investments in a metropolitan area that would be formed out of Baguio and its neighboring Benguet towns of La Trinidad, Itogon, Sablan and Tuba or the BLIST growth area.
Bautista said the need to relocate Baguio and Benguet residents victimized by landslides and floods made the BLIST plan essential.
Sablan, about 10 km from Baguio, had offered to develop vast lands into housing areas to accommodate these displaced residents, he said. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon
