Three people have now been confirmed dead and thirty five are still missing following a landslide at a waste dump in Cebu City, the Philippines, on Thursday 8 January 2026. The incident happened at about 4.00 pm local time, crushing a building where waste was sorted and compacted, and burying 50 sanitation workers at the site. Since this time twelve have been pulled out of the debris alive and three have been found dead. Rescue efforts are being hampered by rainfall, as well as methane leaking from the site which prevents the use of cutting equipment which might create sparks.
The Barangay Binaliw waste site opened in 2019 on the site of a former Mango plantation, and has been dogged by controversy ever since. The site is officially a landfill site, however, landfill sites comprise one or more large excavated pits, which are then lined with waterproof clay and a dense plastic lining, and once they are filled to an agreed level, are sealed with more clay and then topsoil. Inspectors from the Cebu City Environment and Natural Resources Office were unable to find any trace of such a lining when they inspected the site in August 2024, instead finding an open dump site where waste was being piled ever higher.
Since its opening, people living close to the Barangay Binaliw site have complained about foul smells emerging from the site, and increasingly about the precarious way in which waste has been piled up, at a site close to many local homes. Despite these claims, the city has continued to send waste to the privately-owned site, something which has led to accusations of corruption, but which is probably more a result of a lack of alternative facilities to accommodate waste from the city, which has a population of about a million people.
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