ITOGON, Benguet — Hundreds of families were rendered homeless when their houses were totally wrecked after a huge portion of Sitio Luneta, Antamok here suddenly sank at the height of Typhoon “Pepeng”over the weekend.

At the same time, hundreds of schoolchildren were also deprived of pursuing their regular classes when the Luneta Elementary School also sank with the numerous structures since the area where they were constructed was an alleged former underground worksite of the defunct Benguet Corporation.

Last year, 120 families, the Luneta Elementary School, and a church suffered heavy damages when over 52 hectares of the barangay suddenly caved in when the diversion tunnels of the BC were blocked, forcing the water underneath to find its normal course.

The earlier sinking of the village happened at the height of Typhoon “Niña” which was simultaneous with the trapping of 26 pocket miners inside the BC’s Level 700 due to strong water current of the Antamok River.

The affected villagers claimed that if only the BC’s management complied with the order of Environment Secretary Joselito Atienza to restore the original course of the river, the recent sinking of their place could not have occurred.

After the tragic incident last year, Atienza directed the mine firm to restore the original course of the Antamok River, which was previously diverted to allow the conduct of the open pit mining activity, because their drain tunnels were reportedly blocked over the years.

Since water usually finds it course, it then resulted in the sinking of a portion of the village and the eventual damage to private and public property in the area.

Aside from the damaged private and public properties, roads leading to Luneta and Luacan were blocked by huge landslides while some of its portions suffered from road cuts that will take several months to restore.