Concluding our municipal risk assessment...

Following is a selection of pictures from the last leg of our Disaster Risk Reduction and Management team's site assessment of the municipality's 11 barangays:

Homes surrounding the small port at Jamoog are susceptible to storm surge during a monsoon or typhoon.

A view of the coastline from Barangay Jamoog. We scaled the large hillside in search of a 1-meter wide, 150-meter long crack locals had found in the soil several years back. No evidence remains, but such a crack could be indicative of an unidentified fault line through the village which could cause an earthquake in the future.

The food… my God the food. Most places we’ve been have greeted us with a smorgasborg of local delicacies. Picture here is large prawns (shrimp), two varieties of fish, pork adobo, and pork intestines. On these excursions, we’ve also been given octopus, mud crabs, eel, and a wide variety of fresh fruits.

Local residents in the island barangay of Buenavista describe flooding which occurs monthly during high tide.

A young boy walks back to his coastal home from school, making use of a log to cross over water.

In Buenavista, large boulders sit precariously along the hillside. If a landslide were to occur, these boulders could be thrust into the many homes downhill.

The buildings of Buenavista High School were constructed in a cut slope along the hillside. Large boulders breach the edge of this slope, and have drifted even closer to the school. A couple of these boulders directly abut the school building. This is, again, a very problematic scenario in the case of landslides.

These residents adjacent to the port in Buenavista constructed to homes alongside the seabed, which they built up with rock, coral, and soil.

A bridge over Pinamukran Creek in Guindaulan has suffered heavy damage during frequent flood events. The ends of the retaining walls on either side have collapsed, and the surrounding road beds washed away. The channel is too narrow downstream, and the bridge is under-designed causing frequent flooding of nearby homes.

Many houses, such as this one in Kailingan, are built on stilts along steep slopes in hilly terrain.