Twice the family of 10 occupying the doomed house in Sabloyon, Caramon was told to evacuate the area, with the second warning coming just seconds before a wall of mud and trees tore through the light structure at 3 AM of Oct. 23, 2024.
According to accounts of the incident, a member of the barangay council warned the family to leave the house and move to a safer place sometime during the evening of Oct. 22, as heavy rains brought by Tropical Storm “Kristine” could trigger landslides in Sitio Otsenta, so named as it is near the Kilometer 80 marker of the Panganiban-Sabloyon secondary road.
The cluster of houses along this shortcut linking Caramoran to the other side of the island either perches on the edge of a cliff or just below the side of steep mountains.
Apparently, the warning was ignored as the 30-year-old father of two of the four victims decided to drink intoxicating liquor while waiting out the storm.
With Garry Docillo inside the house at the time were his wife Ivy, 35; their five children, Ivan Docillo Aguirre, 9, and siblings Calvin Gee, 8, Garvin, 7, Alvin, 4, and one-year-old Princess, also surnamed Aguirre; his father Domingo Dermas Docillo, 57; Domingo’s daughter Lodelyn Capil Docillo, 22; and Razzlyn Docillo Tuldac, 8, whose Manila-based mother is also Domingo’s daughter.
Except for Garry, all of them were apparently asleep as the torrential rains loosened the soil on the mountainside just across the road from their house, the other side of which was a steep embankment bordering a creek.
At 3 AM of Oct. 23, a sound loud enough to be heard inside the wooden house reportedly awoke the children and began crying apparently out of fear.
At that time, their neighbors reportedly shouted at the house’s occupants to leave as a small landslide had occurred across the road.
Just seconds after Garry went out to seek help, a bigger landslide rammed brown earth, trees and vegetation into the front portion of the Docillo residence, which collapsed towards the edge of the cliff.
The entire GI roofing and its wooden frame, as well as parts of the destroyed walls, also fell down on the helpless victims, trapping them inside.
It is claimed that it was already two hours later that the grief-stricken Garry and his neighbors managed to reach most of the nine victims inside the collapsed structure, cutting open the GI roofing on two sides of the roof to bring them out.
Only Ivy escaped unscathed, Domingo was pinned down by part of the roof, and two others – Ivan and Garvin – had minor injuries.
Only the feet of Calvin Gee were visible in the wreckage and rescuers managed to dig him out alive, but with his left knee reportedly dislocated.
Found dead inside the house were Lodelyn Docillo, Razzlyn Tuldac, and siblings Alvin and Princess. Most of them sustained blunt traumatic injuries to their heads and bodies from the collapsed roof, with some of them pierced by nails sticking out of the lumber.
Personnel of the Caramoran municipal police station together with 3rd Platoon of the 2nd Police Mobile Force Company and Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office assisted in the recovery of the victim’s bodies and brought the survivors to the Caramoran Municipal Hospital in Datag for immediate medical attention.