ENVIRONMENT officials are assessing the suitability of Kinatarkan Islet in Sta. Fe town, Bantayan Island, northern Cebu as a relocation site for families displaced by a sinkhole that formed in one of the town’s barangays last week.
“We’ll be identifying a possible relocation site within the islet where these affected communities will be able to live safer,” said chief geologist Al Emil Berador of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau in Central Visayas (MGB-7) after a site inspection.
The sinkhole in sitio Dapdap, barangay Langub, has a diameter of 10 meters by 14 meters and is one meter deep.
More than 90 households or 237 persons were evacuated to a Seventh Day Adventist church in the area after the incident.
“The affected area including the sinkhole with some tension cracks is about 20 meters by 40 meters and it continues to move.
The area is underlain or carpeted with coralline limestone belonging to the Carcar formation,” Berador said.
Monitoring
He said the sinkhole is getting closer to the affected area and is unsafe for the residents. Berador recommended putting up a signage or cordoning off the area and to place it under constant monitoring.
MGB-7 Regional Director Loreto B. Alburo earlier recommended to the local government units
(LGUs) to take precautionary measures after he received a phone call from Sta. Fe Mayor Jose Esgana last Saturday.
He said the collapse of the cave roof which resulted to the formation of a sinkhole may have been triggered by the intense and prolonged precipitation brought by Typhoon Glenda and a low pressure area over the weekend.
Berador said the sinkhole development is one of the geological ‘natural’ processes that could occur in the islet. A sinkhole, also known as a sink, shake hole, swallow hole, swallet, doline or cenote is a natural depression or hole in the surface topography caused by karst processes—the chemical dissolution of carbonate rocks.
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