BAGUIO CITY – Hundreds of residents living in three identified geo-hazard villages in this mountain resort city are on the brink of being dislocated and may eventually lose their multi-million structures in the event of another continuous heavy downpour.

The prediction was made by the city disaster coordinating council (CDCC) and the Cordillera office of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) after they discovered that the hundreds of structures are erected on areas described to have “firestick topography.”

Experts explained that firestick topography means that there are underground rivers and streams located below the fragile soil and rock formations which makes the places geologically hazardous even with proper engineering mitigating measures.

In Crystal Cave, Bakakeng Central here, the CDCC discovered at least 60 multi-million houses occupied by nearly 400 individuals are constructed over a high-risk area considering that there are underground rivers and streams below them that poses a serious threat to life and limb, especially during heavy rains.

Furthermore, the Crystal Cave area serves as one of the drain areas of the City Camp lagoon, the usual flooded area in the city, before it finally drains into the Asin River. If this situation continues, there will come a time that the structures in the area will be affected by the expected sinking of a wide portion of the place due to the highly fractured soil and rock formation aggravated by the presence of bodies of water underneath.

In Pinsao proper, another 100 structures are now in their critical state after they suffered from huge cracks after a huge portion of the mountain where they were constructed started to significantly sink because of too much saturation from the rains over the past several weeks.

At Puroks 7 and 8 in Barangay Fairview, some 200 structures have already been declared as beyond human occupancy after a portion of the mountain where they were constructed sank during the onslaught of typhoon “Pepeng”, thereby rendering the structures useless and no longer recoverable.

The CDCC and MGB-CAR believe the Pinsao and Fairview area might suffer the same fate as that of the Little Kibungan village in Puguis, La Trinidad, Benguet where over 100 lives were lost in a huge landslide that buried at least 34 structures.

Aside from the three villages, other areas which were identified as critical places during the occurrence of heavy rains is the Quirino Hill and Guisad Sorong barangays because of alleged fragile rock and soil formations.

The CDCC advised residents in the identified danger zones to consider transferring to other safer places in the city to prevent any untoward incident.