MANILA — Local authorities said on Monday that eight (8) people had died as a result of the fall of a huge trash mountain in Cebu City, while dozens more remained unaccounted missing.

According to information from the Cebu City Fire Station, the fatality toll increased to 8 on Sunday night when two females were rescued from the rubble.

According to Councilor Dave Tumulak, chairman of the Cebu City Disaster Council, search efforts for 28 more people who were still unaccounted for continued on Monday morning, with rescuers using a crane to access challenging portions of the site.

The Binaliw Landfill, a privately run facility that manages waste for the city of almost a million people, buried about 50 sanitation workers on Thursday after a mountain of trash fell on them from an estimated height of 20 storeys.

They have been complaining about the landfill for a while now, he continued.

12 employees have so far been pulled from garbage and taken to the hospital.

According to a rescue official on Saturday, emergency personnel were forced to halt their efforts due to the risk of additional collapse posed by the continuously shifting mountain of refuse.

Villanueva claimed that the risk has only grown due to the rain.

Villanueva stated over the phone with AFP that an inter-agency panel would make the final decision and that the focus was anticipated to shift from rescue to recovery on Monday.

Separately, a public relations officer stated that the emphasis would probably go to recovering bodies.

While some family members chose locations closer to the facility to observe the rescue operations, scores of relatives gathered outside the disaster site under the tents that were given to protect them from the sun.

Cebu Mayor Nestor Archival cited typhoon-driven rains and a recent earthquake as potential precipitating circumstances during an interview with local media.

However, Cebu City council member Joel Garganera claimed that the trash pile had represented an obvious danger.

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