Relatives and others wait for updates after a huge mound of garbage collapsed at a waste segregation facility in Binaliw, Cebu city on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Hernandez)
CEBU, Philippines (AFP): Rescue workers searched on Friday for dozens of people buried under a mountain of garbage that collapsed at a landfill in the central Philippines, killing at least one.
About 50 sanitation workers were buried when the towering pile of refuse toppled onto them at Binaliw Landfill, a privately operated facility in Cebu City, on Thursday.
"There are signs of life," Cebu mayor Nestor Archival told a Friday news briefing, adding that hundreds of rescuers already on site would be joined by "another 500" for search efforts he expected to last through to Sunday.
Rita Cogay, who operates a compactor at the site, told AFP she had stepped outside to get a drink of water just moments before the building where she had been in was crushed.
"I thought a helicopter had crashed. But when I turned, it was the garbage and the building coming down. I ran to safety," the 49-year-old said.
Cogay said she watched as a co-worker who had been "calling out to me" from the wreckage was pulled free.
Rescuers were limited in what equipment they could use because any sparks threatened to ignite methane gas emitted by the landfill, Archival said.
Thirty-four people remain missing, he said, revising down a tally of 38 given earlier on his Facebook page.
At least 12 employees have been pulled alive from the garbage and hospitalised.
- Trash mountain -
Jason Morata, a city assistant public information officer, told AFP the trash mountain "must be four storeys high".
Aerial photos released by police showed what appeared to be multiple structures crushed under the weight of the garbage.
Morata said the buildings had housed "company offices, HR, admin, maintenance staff" for a private firm that ran the site.
"We're considering several factors. If you remember, Cebu was struck by two typhoons in the latter part of 2025... and also an earthquake," he said.
Morata added that information was emerging in a trickle because there was "no signal" at the dump site.
The landfill "processes 1,000 tons of municipal solid waste daily", according to the website of operator Prime Integrated Waste Solutions.
Calls to the company went unanswered on Friday.
"We don't know what caused the collapse. It wasn't raining at all," said Marge Parcotello, a civilian staff member of the police department in Consolacion, a town that shares a common boundary with the dump site.
"Many of the victims are from Consolacion," she said.
More than 200 people were killed in July 2000 when an avalanche of garbage consumed a Manila shanty town populated by several thousand scavengers.
That tragedy, the worst of its kind in Philippine history, prompted public outrage over open landfills. Legislation aimed at better regulation of waste management was passed months later. -- AFP
