The clock is beating the rescuers now. In Cebu City’s Barangay Binaliw, teams digging through a collapsed mountain of trash are confronting the brutal reality of time and weight: the 72-hour window since the January 9 landslide has effectively closed, and officials say the odds of finding survivors are rapidly shrinking. As of Sunday, the confirmed death toll rose to seven after another body was recovered, while at least 29 people remain missing—many of them workers who were simply doing their jobs when the dump gave way.
What happened was not a small slide—it was a collapse of scale. Officials said around 50 sanitation workers were buried when an estimated 20-storey-high mound of garbage toppled at the privately operated Binaliw Landfill, which serves a city of nearly one million. So far, 12 employees have been pulled out alive and hospitalized, but local fire officer Wendell Villanueva said the most recent “signs of life” detected by specialized radar—heartbeats about 30 meters below the debris—have since gone silent, with no new reports confirming survivability.
Rescue work itself has been a moving target. Responders have had to pause at points because the remaining mass of refuse is still shifting, and rain has heightened the risk of another collapse—meaning every shoveled meter forward comes with the threat of losing more people, including rescuers. Villanueva said the operation is expected to pivot from rescue to recovery on Monday, pending a decision by an inter-agency team—a shift that families at the perimeter already seem to feel coming.
Outside the site, the disaster is not measured in tonnage but in waiting: relatives huddle under tents, scanning the dig line for news that either ends the uncertainty or confirms the worst. One sister pleaded to find the missing “alive or dead” so the family can properly care for them; another woman, searching for her sister—three months pregnant—described the silence as maddening. Questions are also sharpening: a city council member called the height of the pile “alarming” and an obvious hazard, while the mayor cited a recent earthquake and typhoon-driven rains as possible triggers. The landfill—run by Prime Integrated Waste Solutions, which says it processes about 1,000 tons of municipal solid waste daily and is the lone service provider for Cebu and nearby communities—did not respond to calls on Sunday. The public-service bottom line: workers and families deserve answers, transparency, and accountability—not just condolences.
Image from Jacqueline Hernandez