The proposed site of the regional offices of the Negros Island Region near the boundary of Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental is in danger of sinking.
Mayor Ernesto Uy of Mabinay, Negros Oriental, said yesterday he is awaiting the initial investigation report of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau of the Department of Environment & Natural Resources in Region 7 on the formation of sinkholes in Hagtu, the last barangay of the upland town, going to Negros Occidental.
He said the report would be a basis for him to determine future actions of the Mabinay government on sinkholes, considering that the area where they are situated is close to the proposed site for the regional centers of the newly-formed Negros Island Region.
He said he ordered the Mabinay Rescue Group to proceed to the area and monitor the sinkholes, following heavy rain earlier yesterday.
Last week, four sinkholes were found at the Malaiba riverbed, with a fifth one having formed over the weekend, spurred by continuous rains and widely perceived to have been caused by what residents believed have been an earthquake or ground shaking nearby, Uy said.
At least two tension cracks were also monitored to have formed around the sinkholes, he added.
Uy said the MGB-7 team that visited the site in Barangay Hagtu, Mabinay, told him there could be a larger hole underneath that must have caused the depressions on the surface.
Initial measurements taken by the MGB-7 team showed the biggest of the five sinkholes had measured around eight to nine meters in diameter, with a depth of about eight feet, Uy said, adding other holes measured around two to three meters in diameter and six to eight feet deep.
The mayor said he believes the sinkholes could have extended farther down from the surface the first time they were observed, but rains and flowing water had eroded sediments that gradually filled them up.
Uy stressed he is very much interested to learn about the MGB-7’s initial pronouncement of the possibility of a bigger hole underneath the surface and locating its outlet.
The MGB-7 team is expected to return soon upon the request of Uy for further study of the sinkholes.
Meanwhile, continuous monitoring of the sinkholes is foremost for the Mabinay LGU to avoid future sinkhole formations, the mayor said.
The MGB-7 team had told him that two days of continuous rain would cause a possible collapse of the ground surface.
The site of the sinkholes is located in what many believe to be an earthquake fault along the Hagtu-Tagukon area in the boundary of Mabinay, Negros Oriental, and Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental.
The purported earthquake fault is said to form part of the Central Negros fault which geologists had earlier reported on.
Tagukon in Kabankalan is the adjacent barangay to Hagtu, and has been declared the site of the future regional centers of the NIR, or Region 18. (PNA)
