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Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 16, 2683–2695, 2016
www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/16/2683/2016/
doi:10.5194/nhess-16-2683-2016
© Author(s) 2016. CC Attribution 3.0 License.
The December 2012 Mayo River debris flow triggered
by Super Typhoon Bopha in Mindanao, Philippines:
lessons learned and questions raised
Kelvin S. Rodolfo1,2, A. Mahar F. Lagmay3,4, Rodrigo C. Eco4, Tatum Miko L. Herrero4,a, Jerico E. Mendoza3,
Likha G. Minimo4, and Joy T. Santiago3
1Professor Emeritus, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, USA
2Project NOAH consultant in 2013
3Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards, Department of Science and Technology, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines
4Volcano-Tectonics Laboratory, National Institute of Geological Sciences, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Philippines
anow at: Magmatic and Hydrothermal Systems, GEOMAR – Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany
Correspondence to: Kelvin S. Rodolfo (krodolfo@uic.edu)
Received: 28 March 2016 – Published in Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss.: 11 April 2016
Revised: 19 October 2016 – Accepted: 6 November 2016 – Published: 15 December 2016
Abstract. Category 5 Super Typhoon Bopha, the world’s
worst storm of 2012, formed abnormally close to the Equator,
and its landfall on Mindanao set the record proximity to the
Equator for its category. Its torrential rains generated an enor-
mous debris flow in the Mayo River watershed that swept
away much of the village Andap in the New Bataan munici-
pality, burying areas under rubble as thick as 9 m and killing
566 people. Established in 1968, New Bataan had never ex-
perienced super typhoons and debris flows. This unfamiliar-
ity compounded the death and damage. We describe Bopha’s
history, debris flows and the Mayo River disaster, and then
we discuss how population growth contributed to the catas-
trophe, as well as the possibility that climate change may ren-
der other near-Equatorial areas vulnerable to hazards brought
on by similar typhoons. Finally, we recommend measures to
minimize the loss of life and damage to property from similar
future events.
1 Introduction
Super Typhoon Bopha was the world’s worst storm in 2012.
In December of that year, its torrential rains on the southern
Philippine island of Mindanao triggered an enormous debris
flow in the Mayo River watershed that devastated Barangay
(village) Andap in New Bataan, a municipality of Com-
postela Valley province. Debris flows, although among the
world’s most destructive natural phenomena, are remarkably
misunderstood. Technically, debris flows are a type of land-
slide (Pierson and Costa, 1987; Cruden and Varnes, 1996;
Hungr et al., 2001), but using the generic term “landslide” as
a synonym for “debris flow” makes most people mistakenly
think of rock masses detaching from a cliff and accumulating
near its base.
Debris flows are also often mistakenly called floods, mud-
slides or mudflows, not only by the media, but by decision
makers as well. In fact, the official descriptions of the dis-
aster incorrectly termed and treated it as a “flash flood”,
and relocation sites were initially evaluated in that context
(MGB, 2012). In 2012 it was still not widely recognized that
the conic-shaped alluvial fans with apices at the mouths of
mountain gorges are built over long periods by rarely occur-
ring debris flows, and are thus unsafe sites to occupy. Such
a lack of understanding may have tragic consequences for
communities like Andap in mountainous terrain. To address
this deficiency, we review debris flows and their deposits in
general, and exemplify them with a detailed description of
the Mayo River event.
Beyond the huge volume and rapidity of the flow itself,
human factors contributed to this catastrophe. Such events
are rare in Mindanao, and New Bataan was settled much
too recently for its founders and inhabitants to be familiar
Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.
2684 K. S. Rodolfo et al.: The December 2012 Mayo River debris flow
Figure 1. Typhoon Bopha (Pablo). (a) Track and development of the super typhoon. New Bataan, Andap and Maragusan rain gauges lie
beneath the Category 3 icon following Mindanao landfall. (b) Bopha at landfall (modified from NASA Earth Observatory, 2012). (c) Tropical
Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) image from which NASA (2012) estimated that Bopha delivered over 240 mm of rainfall near the
coast.
with super typhoons and debris flows. It is worrisome that
the rapidly growing Philippine population continues to ex-
pand into increasingly disaster-prone areas, and it does so
with insufficient hazard evaluation. Unregulated logging de-
forested the steep slopes, facilitating runoff, erosion and the
landslides that fed the debris flow.
As part of Project NOAH (Nationwide Operational As-
sessment of Hazards), the Philippine government’s disaster
assessment program, we studied the Mayo River debris flow
until most of our resources and attention were urgently di-
verted to a new major Philippine disaster event. That was the
world’s worst storm of 2013, Super Typhoon Haiyan in De-
cember, which generated the catastrophic storm surge that
destroyed Tacloban and damaged many other municipalities
on the Visayan Islands, killing thousands of people.
Many questions about the Andap disaster still await our
attention; in the interim this report describes for the larger
community of disaster-mitigation specialists Super Typhoon
Bopha, the Andap catastrophe and its detailed geologic
bases. We review the historical role that population growth
and insufficiently guided settlement continue to play in gen-
erating “natural” disasters in the Philippines.
We then address the possibility that climate change will
bring similar large storms and debris flows more frequently
to Mindanao and to other subequatorial areas that are simi-
larly unused to them. We present the sparse record of tropical
cyclones that made landfall on Mindanao since 1945 and as-
sociated records of the Pacific El Niño–Southern Oscillation
(ENSO). Our review of the literature pertinent to the question
is an invitation for commentary and advice from climatolo-
gists and meteorologists to guide our thinking as we proceed.
We describe our new program, an outgrowth of the Andap
disaster, that has identified over 1200 alluvial fan areas in the
Philippines that are susceptible to debris flows, together with
communities at risk from them. The program has already had
significant success. Finally, we discuss what else might be
done to protect Mindanao and other vulnerable subequatorial
populations from climate-related hazards.
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K. S. Rodolfo et al.: The December 2012 Mayo River debris flow 2685
2 Super Typhoon Bopha
On 23 November 2012, a large area of convection began
forming at 0.6◦N latitude, 158◦E longitude (NASA, 2012).
While still unusually close to the Equator at 03.6◦N, 157◦E,
2 days later it was categorized as a tropical depression
(Fig. 1a). On 26 November, while at 04.4◦N, 155.8◦E, it
was upgraded to Tropical Storm Bopha. It was too close to
the Equator for the weak Coriolis effect there to develop its
rotation quickly, but on 30 November, while still at 3.8◦N,
145.2◦E, it was upgraded to a typhoon. Bopha intensified
into a Category 4 Super Typhoon on 1 December while at
5.8◦N, 138.8◦E. On 2 December, it attained Category 5 wind
speeds of 259 km h−1while at 7.4◦N, 128.9◦E, the record
proximity to the Equator for that category. As it passed south
of Palau Island on 3 December, Bopha weakened into a Cat-
egory 3 typhoon, and then re-intensified to Category 5. It en-
tered the Philippine area of responsibility at 08:00 local time
(LT) on 2 December and was given the local name of Pablo.
On 4 December at 04:45 LT, Bopha arrived at the eastern
Mindanao coast at about 7.7◦N (Fig. 1b), the landfall closest
to the Equator for all Category 5 tropical cyclones of record.
Its average wind speed and gust wind speed were 185 and
210 km h−1, respectively. Once onshore, Bopha weakened
rapidly as it expended much of its energy generating great
havoc. Many fisherfolk were lost at sea and many coastal
dwellers were drowned. The National Disaster Risk Reduc-
tion and Management Council of the Philippine government
(NDRRMC, 2012) also attributed numerous deaths and se-
vere injuries to flying trees and debris, but by far the great-
est cause of death and destruction was wreaked by the de-
bris flow that Bopha’s intense rains generated, which is de-
scribed in this report (Fig. 1c). After passing through Min-
danao, Bopha crossed the Sulu Sea and Palawan Island, en-
tered the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), and then
reversed course towards northern Luzon, but dissipated be-
fore making landfall there.
On 12 February 2013, the United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that while in
the Philippines, Bopha killed 1146 people with 834 missing,
and displaced 925 412 others. It totally or partially damaged
233 163 houses and caused USD 1.04 billion of damage; the
most costly typhoon in the nation’s history up to that time,
only to be superseded by Super Typhoon Haiyan the follow-
ing year.
3 Debris flows
Among the world’s most destructive natural phenomena, de-
bris flows are fast-moving slurries of water, rock fragments,
soil and mud (Takahashi, 1981; Hutter et al., 1994; Iverson,
1997; Iverson et al., 1997). They can be triggered by sud-
den downpours such as those commonly delivered by trop-
ical cyclones, reservoir collapses (Lagmay et al., 2007) or
landslides dislodged by earthquakes into streams. Many de-
bris flows (Table 1) are associated with volcanoes (Vallance,
2000; Rodolfo, 2000; Lagmay et al., 2007). Casualties can
be light or even non-existent in a poorly populated area, such
as Mount St. Helens, or where people are familiar with the
hazard, such as with lahars at Mount Pinatubo.
When rainfall on slopes exceeds critical thresholds of in-
tensity, duration and accumulation it dislodges soil, sediment
and rock masses into landslides that may coalesce to form de-
bris flows, which are slurries of sediment and water with the
consistency of freshly mixed concrete. Water content rarely
exceeds 25 % by weight and may be only 10 %, which is just
enough to provide mobility. Gravel and boulders constitute
more than half of the solids, and sand typically makes up
about 40 %. Silt and clay normally constitute less than 10 %
and remain suspended in the water (Pierson and Scott, 1985;
Smith and Lowe, 1991).
While flowing in a channel, a striking debris-flow char-
acteristic is how easily it transports large boulders, owing
only in part to the buoyancy provided by the density of the
slurry. Boulders repeatedly bounce up from the channel floor
or away from its sides into the central near-surface “plug”
of the flow where friction with the channel is minimal and
flow velocity is greatest. Thus, in a mountain gorge they tend
to migrate to the front of the flow, where they create a high,
moving dam consisting largely of boulders, logs and tree de-
bris.
Behind it, the moving frontal dam ponds the main flow
body, which is richer in sand, silt and clay, and progressively
becomes more dilute toward the rear, undergoing transitions
into hyperconcentrated flows, so called because they carry
much more sediment than normal streams do. Sand, silt and
clay commonly comprise up to 75 % by weight of hypercon-
centrated flows, which look similar to normal, turbid flood
waters, but flow twice as fast or more, typically 2 to 3m s−1
(Pierson and Scott, 1985). Having no strength, they can trans-
port gravel only as bed load. Hyperconcentrated flows in turn
are succeeded by normal, turbid stream flow. Confusingly,
“debris flow” sometimes refers to only a true debris-flow
phase and sometimes to an entire hydrologic event including
its hyperconcentrated and normal stream-flow phases, which
we do here in reference to the Mayo River debris flow.
Emerging from a mountain gorge, a debris flow spreads
out, and increased basal friction slows it down. It drops some
of its sediment load, adding to a conical alluvial fan, ex-
pressed on topographic maps by contour lines that are con-
vex toward the downstream direction (Fig. 2). Even after it
spreads out, it continues to transport large boulders by com-
bined flotation, pushing, dragging and rolling. The flow may
extend beyond the fan for many kilometers, especially its hy-
perconcentrated and normal-flood phases. Debris flows vary
in volume by many orders of magnitude, from 1000 to 100
thousand m3for the most frequent ones to more than 100
million m3(Table 1; Jakob, 2005). Importantly, debris-flow
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2686 K. S. Rodolfo et al.: The December 2012 Mayo River debris flow
Table 1. The world’s 10 largest debris flows on record ranked by volume.
Location Date Trigger Volume in
million m3
Deaths Reference
Barrancas and
Colorado rivers, Ar-
gentina
1914 Failure of ancient
landslide dam
2000
(estimate)
? Schuster et al. (2002)
Bucao River, Mount
Pinatubo, Philippines
10 Jul 2002 Caldera lake breach 160 0 Lagmay et al. (2006)
Bucao River, Mount
Pinatubo, Philippines
5–6 Oct 1993 Typhoon Flo
(Kadiang) rains
110 0 Remotigue (1995)
Kolka Glacier, North
Ossetia-Alania, Rus-
sia
2002 Large glacial
detachment
100 125 Haeberli et al. (2004)
Huascarán,
Peru
1970 Pyroclastic flows
melted snow and ice
∼100
(flow volume)
18 000 Plafker and
Erickson (1978)
Nevado del Ruiz,
Colombia
13 Nov 1985 Pyroclastic flows
melted snow & ice
40 23 000 Schuster et al. (2002)
Mayo River,
Mindanao,
Philippines
4 Dec 2012 Typhoon Bopha
(Pablo) rainfall
25–30 566 This report
Chilean Coast Range,
Vargas, Venezuela
Dec 1999 Heavy rain 19 30 000 Wieczorek (2002)
Mayon Volcano,
Philippines
30 Nov 2006 Typhoon Durian
(Reming) rains
19 1226 Paguican et al. (2009)
Pine Creek–Muddy
River, Mount St.
Helens, Washington,
USA
18 May 1980 Pyroclastic surge
melted snow and ice
14 0 Pierson (1985)
sizes correlate positively with velocities, which range from 2
to 100 km h−1(Pierson, 1998; Rickenmann, 1999).
An important distinguishing characteristic of debris-flow
deposits is “reverse grading”: boulders tend to be smaller at
the base and increase in size upwards. Large boulders com-
monly jut out at the top of a deposit (Fig. 3a). In addition to
the buoyancy they experience from the dense slurry, the best
mechanism advanced to explain reverse grading is kinetic
sieving (Gallino and Pierson, 1985; Savage and Lun, 1988;
Hutter et al., 1994; Vallance, 2000). While the flowing slurry
is undergoing shear at its base, void spaces of different sizes
continuously open and close, and particles of equivalent sizes
migrate into them while they last. Smaller voids form more
frequently and are filled by smaller solid particles, so larger
boulders migrate up to the flow surface. Debris-flow deposits
are also characteristically “matrix-supported” (Fig. 3b); the
larger rock fragments are separated by a mixture of the finer
sediment that constituted the bulk of the flowing slurry that
carried them. Pierson (2005) has published a useful guide
for distinguishing the effects of debris flows from those of
floods.
4 Methods
Prior to our field work, we mapped out the extent of the
debris flow deposits using high-resolution optical satellite
imagery acquired through Sentinel Asia, the collaborative
initiative between space agencies and disaster management
agencies, that applies remote sensing and Web-GIS technolo-
gies to support Asian Pacific disaster management. In the
images, large boulders and other coarse debris easily dis-
cerned in the main debris flow body facilitated its delineation
from the hyperconcentrated-flow deposits (Fig. 4c). The only
available maps were 1 : 50 000 scale maps dating from the
1950s. Therefore, we commissioned a lidar survey to gener-
ate detailed topographic maps of the affected areas for our
fieldwork.
In the field, we analyzed the new deposits, ascertained that
they were indeed left by a debris flow and found evidence
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K. S. Rodolfo et al.: The December 2012 Mayo River debris flow 2687
Figure 2. Physical setting of the Andap disaster. Grey area enclosed
by dashes is the Mayo watershed. All steep slopes are contoured
at 50 m intervals. Below 700m elevations the contour interval is
20 m to better define the gentler valley surfaces. New deposits of
true debris flows south of the Mayo bridge are shown in solid black;
associated hyperconcentrated-flow deposits are shaded in grey. Note
that the topographic contour lines from the Mayo bridge to New
Bataan are convex northward, defining the surface of an alluvial
fan. The trace of the Mati Fault is only generalized; it has numerous
associated fractures in a broad zone along its length.
that enabled us to determine its velocity when it hit Andap.
We also found and described old deposits that confirm that
debris flows had happened long before New Bataan was es-
tablished. The Bopha event was described for us in detail by
residents and eyewitnesses we interviewed. We asked those
who have lived in New Bataan since the 1960s whether sim-
ilar events had happened before; they had not. Data gathered
from these surveys and interviews were used to analyze and
reconstruct the event.
5 Geomorphologic setting and history of New Bataan
and the Mayo debris flow
Upstream of New Bataan and Andap, the Mayo River drains
a mountainous watershed of 36.5 km2with a total relief of
about 2320 m and with slopes commonly steeper than 35◦
(Fig. 2). The Mayo River passes northward through a narrow
Figure 3. Debris-flow deposits in the New Bataan area. (a) Boul-
der in ancient reverse-graded debris-flow deposit. Well-established
trees indicate an age of some decades prior to the settlement of the
town. (b) Old debris-flow deposits underlying New Bataan – An-
dap highway. Boulders are separated from each other by a matrix
of finer-grained sediment. For scale, the concrete is 15 cm thick.
The coarse sediment atop the highway are new debris-flow deposits.
(c) Boulder-rich deposits of debris flows that destroyed much of the
barangay. (d) Tangle of fallen trees and branches left with numerous
cadavers by hyperconcentrated flows in central New Bataan.
gorge to join the Kalyawan River, which flows in the Com-
postela Valley that it shares with several other tributaries of
the Agusan River.
A site 8 km downstream of the Mayo junction, near
the eastern edge of the Compostela Valley, was informally
known as Cabinuangan after its many enormous, valuable
Binuang (Octomeles sumatrana) trees. This old-growth for-
est drew the attention of the logging industry in the early
1950s (Ea et al., 2013). As the loggers rapidly expanded
their road networks, immigrant farmers from Luzon and the
Visayan Islands followed closely behind, planting the cleared
land mainly with coconuts, rice, corn, bananas, coffee, cacao,
abaca and bamboo.
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2688 K. S. Rodolfo et al.: The December 2012 Mayo River debris flow
Figure 4. New Bataan. (a) Google image of Cabinuangan (the cen-
tral district of New Bataan) before the debris flow. (b) Southward
facing three-dimensional terrain diagram of New Bataan, show-
ing Cabinuangan and the site of outlying Barangay Andap. (c) A
1 m pixel resolution panchromatic Pleiades satellite image of the
boulder-rich debris flow deposit in Barangay Andap.
In 1966 the government subdivided the public lands of
Compostela Valley into municipal areas, including one of
55 315 ha that was further subdivided into farm lots and a
154 ha central town site in Cabinuangan. When this new mu-
nicipality comprising 16 barangays was formally established
by an act of Congress on 18 June 1968, it was named New
Bataan in honor of Luz Banzon-Magsaysay, the widow of
President Magsaysay and a native of the Luzon province of
Bataan, who had lent her influence to proponents of the town.
The central town retained “Cabinuangan” for its barangay
name. In 1970, two years after its founding, the population of
New Bataan was 19 978 (National Census and Statistics Of-
fice, 1970); by 1 May 2010 it had increased 238 % to 47470,
including 10 390 in Cabinuangan and 7550 in Andap (Na-
tional Statistics Office, 2010).
Cabinuangan was laid out thoughtfully, with streets radi-
ating out from a circular central core for government and so-
cial functions (Fig. 4a), but the founders of New Bataan were
not aware of the natural hazards it faced. No one, including
the government, realized that the Kalyawan River portion of
Compostela Valley had served as an avenue for ancient de-
bris flows. Indeed, debris flows were not widely understood
at that time, and even the government-issued hazard map of
New Bataan available in 2012 (MGB, 2009) was only con-
cerned with landslides and floods. This lack of geomorpho-
Figure 5. The rainfall that triggered and sustained the debris flows.
Histogram measures rain accumulated during successive 15 min in-
tervals; the heavy curve is accumulated rainfall.
logic knowledge would prove fatal during Super Typhoon
Bopha (Fig. 4b).
Barangay Andap was established at the head of the val-
ley 3 km upstream of Cabinuangan, on high ground that
was not recognized as an alluvial fan but is clearly ex-
pressed as such in Fig. 2 by contour lines that are convex
downstream where they cross the valley. Characteristically
reverse-graded, matrix-supported debris-flow deposits of un-
known but ancient age built up the fan (Fig. 3).
6 The Mayo River debris flow of 2012
Rain-gauge data from Maragusan municipality 17 km south
of Andap are proxies for the rainfall that triggered the debris
flow (Fig. 5). From midnight on 4 December until the flow
occurred at 06:30 LT that morning, the Mayo River water-
shed above the alluvial fan received 120 mm of rain, falling
as intensely as 43 mm h−1, and accumulated 4.4 million m3.
These values greatly exceeded the global initiation thresholds
for debris flows, including those at the Philippine volcanoes
Mayon and Mount Pinatubo (Rodolfo and Arguden, 1991;
Van Westen and Daag, 2005), and Taiwan (Guzzetti et al.,
2008; Huang, 2013).
After the debris flow began, it was sustained un-
til 07:00 LT by another 24 mm of torrential rainfall that
peaked at 52 mm h−1at 06:45 LT. This delivered an addi-
tional 900 000 m3of runoff. Substantial discharge from the
17.7 km2Mamada River watershed joined the debris flows
about 450 m downstream of the Mayo Bridge; this, along
with discharge from other Kalyawan River tributaries, di-
luted the western portions of the debris flow into hypercon-
centrated flows that reached 2 km beyond Cabinuangan.
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K. S. Rodolfo et al.: The December 2012 Mayo River debris flow 2689
Figure 6. (a) From Unisys (2012), JTWC (2012, 2013) and NASA (21 January–30 December 2015). TD =Tropical Depression;
TS =Tropical Storm. Typhoons fully dated; TDs and TSs dated by month number only (January =1 to December =12). Panel (b) modified
from NOAA Earth Science Research Laboratory (2014).
Other factors facilitated the debris flows. The rocks are ex-
tensively fractured because the watershed lies in the broad,
left-lateral Philippine Fault zone of which the Mati Fault in
Fig. 2 is a major splay. Its steep slopes have been largely
deforested by mining and logging, which facilitated numer-
ous landslides, both shallow and involving bedrock, that
were triggered by Bopha’s heavy rains. Powerful typhoon
winds uprooted trees on the upper watershed, enhancing
infiltration-triggered soil slips and erosion by runoff, pro-
viding additional bulk that included clay, which increases
debris-flow cohesion, mobility and runout distance (Costa,
1984). Abundant, ancient and easily remobilized debris-flow
deposits underlay the path that the flows took (Fig. 3b).
At about 06:30 LT, Andap resident Eva Penserga watched
in horror as the 16 m high front of a full-fledged debris flow
emerged from the Mayo River gorge and obliterated a 100 m
long concrete bridge 1.5 km upstream of Andap, carrying
away a truck bearing 30 construction workers. Shortly there-
after, people in Andap witnessed the arrival of the debris
flow, which lasted only about 5 to 10 min. Unfortunately,
alerts radioed the night before had directed about 200 peo-
ple from outside Andap proper to seek shelter from floods at
the community center where they joined many local inhab-
itants; 566 people were swept away, equivalent to 7.5 % of
the village population counted by the 2010 census.
Amateur video footage (available at https://youtu.be/
figGMlzDt0s) and the 5 km length of the debris-flow deposit
indicate a flow velocity of 60 km h−1. No structures survived
the main flow, but battered trees standing in the debris field
30 m from its eastern edge and 70m upstream from the oblit-
erated community center document slower flows there. The
heights to which the flows rose up against the trees yield their
velocity (Arguden and Rodolfo, 1990): assuming that all of
the kinetic energy of the flow was converted to potential en-
ergy as it rose up against these obstacles, the 1.7 m run-up
height hindicates a velocity vof 5.8 m s−1, or 21 km h−1,
from v=(2gh)1/2. This value is only minimal because the
formula considers neither channel roughness nor internal
friction.
From satellite imagery and our post-Bopha lidar mapping
and field measurements, the volume of the Andap debris-flow
deposit is 25 to 30 million m3, ranking it among the largest
ever experienced worldwide (Table 1). The deposit is 0.2–
1 km wide and 0.25–9 m thick. Debris with boulders up to
16 m in diameter (Fig. 3c) covered 500 ha and buried Andap
as deep as 9 m. Downstream, clast sizes decrease and the de-
posits thin, grading into sandy, laminated hyperconcentrated-
flow deposits less than 0.5 m thick. These finer-grained de-
posits cover 2000 hectares and extend 8 km beyond Cabin-
uangan. Where these finer-grained sediments dominate, as-
sociated tree debris clogs streams and creeks. In Cabinuan-
gan, dozens of corpses were recovered from a tangle of fallen
trees and logs (Fig. 3d).
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2690 K. S. Rodolfo et al.: The December 2012 Mayo River debris flow
7 The role of Philippine population growth
The global increase in death and damage from natural
calamities may be due in part to the effects of anthro-
pogenic climate change, but another, more likely reason
is the growth of populations in high-risk areas (Huppert
and Sparks, 2006). Developed nations in Europe and North
America are not immune from increasing incidences of land-
slide disasters (Cascini et al., 2005; Di Martire et al., 2012;
Lari et al., 2012). The trend, however, is especially pro-
nounced in places that experience tropical-cyclone landfalls
(Weinkle et al., 2012). Nowhere is this better exemplified
than in Mindanao by the Andap disaster.
The founding of the newer Mindanao settlements includ-
ing New Bataan was largely driven by the pressure of rapid
population growth, well described by Dolan (1993). In 1950
the Philippine land–population ratio was about one cultivated
hectare per agricultural worker; by the early 1980s the ratio
had been cut in half. The 1980 census documented that 6 of
the 12 Philippine provinces experiencing the fastest growth
were in western, northern and southern Mindanao.
When New Bataan was settled in 1968, the annual Philip-
pine population growth rate was 2.98 % and Filipinos num-
bered 36 424 000. By 2014 the population had almost tripled,
to 107 668 000 (United States Census Bureau International
Programs, 2014). A Reproductive Health Care congressional
bill was filed in 2003, its main purpose being to provide
contraception to the poor. After strenuous opposition from
the clergy in this predominantly Roman Catholic country,
the bill was finally passed in December 2012, coincidentally
the month that Bopha arrived. The annual growth rate has
dropped to 1.83 %, but that means that the country will still
need to provide for another two million people in 2016, and
similar numbers every year for some time to come. Among
these needs, housing will be extremely difficult to find be-
cause hardly any hazard-free areas remain.
In February 2013 the office of the Philippine president
organized Task Force Pablo, a multiagency group of geol-
ogists and engineers from the Mines and Geosciences Bu-
reau (MGB) and Project NOAH, to conduct field analyses of
the Andap disaster and search for safe relocation sites for
the people of New Bataan and other municipalities of the
province of Compostela Valley. Task Force Pablo identified
31 resettlement sites using lidar-derived digital terrain mod-
els and rainfall intensity–duration frequency data from the
national weather service. The phenomenal event at Barangay
Andap required special attention from us to identify reloca-
tion sites safe from future debris flows in New Bataan. The
task is a daunting one; the Kalyawan floodplain is suscep-
tible to floods and debris flows, and the valley margins and
adjacent high grounds are susceptible to landslides.
8 Is Bopha a harbinger of the future?
8.1 The historical record of tropical cyclone landfalls
in Mindanao
The ancient debris-flow deposits in New Bataan testify that
such flows occurred in Compostela Valley at least once be-
fore Super Typhoon Bopha. Dating those deposits is a prime
topic for future research. At present, all we can say is that
the event occurred long before New Bataan was settled in
1968; the sizes of some trees rooted in the old deposits sug-
gest decades or even a century or more earlier.
The most urgent question raised by these old deposits and
by the Andap disaster is whether their debris flows simply
represent the latest, very rare and essentially random events
in Mindanao, or whether it and other places at low latitudes
can expect to experience such events more frequently as the
climate changes. Most climatologists (Webster et al., 2005;
Emanuel, 2005; Bengtsson et al., 2007; Elsner et al., 2008;
Emanuel et al., 2008; Knutson et al., 2010) equate climate
change with fewer but more intense tropical cyclones due to
rising sea-surface temperatures and atmospheric water vapor
contents. However, this does not necessarily mean that ty-
phoons will make Mindanao landfall more frequently in the
future, even though their history since 1945 might suggest as
much (Fig. 6a).
Tropical cyclones rarely and sporadically make landfall on
Mindanao because the island lies in the ephemeral southern
fringe of the northwest Pacific typhoon track. Furthermore,
most Mindanao typhoons do not occur during the main sea-
son of July through October, and most are tropical depres-
sions; hence, they do not enter into most modeling attempts
to predict future typhoon behavior.
In 1945 the US Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center began
to archive northwest Pacific tropical cyclones, recording only
34 Mindanao landfalls by the end of 2012 (Unisys Weather,
2012). A tropical depression arrived in January 2013. On
13 January 2014 Tropical Storm Lingling (local name Aga-
ton) made landfall and killed 70 people in Mindanao (NDR-
RMC, 2014). On 29 December 2014, Tropical Storm Jangmi
killed 10 people in Mindanao (NDRRMC, 2015a). Finally
Tropical Depression Onyok arrived on 18 December 2015
(NDRRMC, 2015b). These 38 landfalls are incontrovertible,
and our search for what the future holds begins with them.
During 40 of the 69 years monitored by the US Navy Joint
Typhoon Warning Center, not even a single tropical depres-
sion visited the island; one quiescent period lasted 8 years,
from 1956 to 1963 inclusively. Most of the tropical cyclones
that affected Mindanao were of the weaker varieties: 21 trop-
ical depressions, 11 tropical storms, and Category 1 typhoons
Violet in 1955 and Lola in 1975.
Before Bopha, Mindanao was largely spared stronger ty-
phoons except for Category 5 Louise in 1964, Category 3
Kate in 1970, and Category 4 Ike in 1984. Louise and Ike
both barely grazed the northernmost tip of the island, and
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K. S. Rodolfo et al.: The December 2012 Mayo River debris flow 2691
Kate passed some 45 km south of New Bataan, where it is
remembered as not being very windy, but having heavy rains
and flooding. Only four tropical cyclones of all categories
arrived during the northwest Pacific peak typhoon season of
July through October, although these included Kate in Octo-
ber 1970 and Ike in September 1984. In preseasonal March
through June 12 storms hit, and 19 arrived during the post-
season months of November through January.
From 1945 to 1989, the frequency of Mindanao landfalls
was only one every 2.5 years. Then that rate abruptly dou-
bled to one landfall every 1.32 years in the period from 1990
to 2015. Another fact causing concern is that Mindanao has,
for the first time, recently suffered lethal cyclones in two con-
secutive years. The year before Bopha, from 16 to 17 Decem-
ber 2011 the city of Cagayan de Oro on the Mindanao coast
180 km north of New Bataan received 180 mm of rain from
Tropical Storm Washi. Most fell during only 6 h, causing
floods that killed 1268 people (Ramos, 2012; Manila Obser-
vatory, 2012). A tropical depression made landfall on Min-
danao 2 months before Washi, making 2011 only the fifth
year since 1945 when Mindanao experienced two tropical
cyclones. Only 3 years later in 2014, Mindanao again ex-
perienced two lethal tropical cyclones: Tropical Depression
Lingling and Tropical Storm Jangmi.
The increase in Mindanao storminess since 1990 is strik-
ing and alarming. It cannot be ascribed simply to the climate
change induced by anthropogenic global warming, however,
and requires additional research focused on the actual record
of tropical cyclones in Mindanao.
8.2 The ENSO cycle and future Mindanao typhoon
activity
ENSO is the complex result of ocean–atmosphere interac-
tions that are best expressed by fluctuating sea-surface tem-
peratures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific from
warmer El Niño to cooler La Niña periods (Trenberth, 1997;
Wolter and Timlin, 2011). Atmospheric pressures at the
ocean surface during an El Niño are high in the western Pa-
cific and low in the eastern Pacific, and the situation is re-
versed during a La Niña. Typical episodes of both occur ev-
ery 3 to 5 years, but El Niños tend to last 9 months to 1 year
and La Niñas lasts 1 to 3 years (NOAA Climate Prediction
Center, 2014).
During El Niño episodes, tropical cyclones tend to form
farther east, are more widely dispersed and curve north-
ward, making fewer Philippine landfalls. Under La Niña con-
ditions they tend to form farther west, stay below 23◦N
and travel westward, thus visiting the Philippines more
frequently, especially during the later typhoon months of
September through November (Wang and Chan, 2002; Wu
et al., 2004; Emanuel, 2005; Emanuel et al., 2008; Zhang
et al., 2012). Except for their tendency to arrive later than
November, all the typhoons before Bopha that made Min-
danao landfalls since 1945 fit the pattern by occurring dur-
ing La Niñas (Fig. 6a and b). Bopha came either during a
weak La Niña (NOAA Climate Prediction Center (2014) or
a weak El Niño (NOAA Earth Science Research Laboratory,
2014). The weaker storms and depressions visiting Mindanao
show no marked preference between El Niño and La Niña
episodes, 15 vs. 22, respectively.
Cai et al. (2015) recently analyzed 21 global-climate mod-
els of Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project
commissioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. They have arrived at the disquieting conclusions that
global warming will double the frequency of future extreme
La Niñas, from the historical average of one every 23 to
13 years. They ascribed the change to three effects of global
warming. The western North Pacific region of archipelagos
and insular seas that includes the Philippines will warm faster
than the central Pacific, vertical temperature gradients of the
upper tropical ocean will be enhanced and extreme La Niñas
usually follow extreme El Niños, which will also occur more
frequently (Cai et al., 2014). Given the tendency of typhoons
to make landfalls on the Philippines more frequently during
La Niñas, the Philippines, including Mindanao, should ex-
pect greater storminess in future.
8.3 Other models of future typhoon behavior
A recent review by 10 prominent researchers studying the
long-term response of tropical cyclones to climate change
(Knutson et al., 2010) stated that considerable research on
the topic has yielded conflicting results because of large fluc-
tuations in cyclone frequencies and intensities, as well as se-
rious deficiencies in the availability and quality of historical
records. Thus, it is uncertain whether the observed changes
in tropical-cyclone activity exceed the variability due to nat-
ural causes. The authors do have some confidence in theory
and models that project globally averaged frequencies of all
tropical cyclones to decrease 6–34 % by 2100, but for inten-
sities to increase 2–11 % owing to substantial increases in the
most intense cyclones. Most worrisome for debris-flow gen-
eration, the review predicts that precipitation within 100 km
of storm centers will increase about 20 %.
In short, the record of increasingly frequent landfalls on
Mindanao may or may not indicate that more frequent ty-
phoon disasters will happen there in the future, although the
results of Cai and coworkers (2014, 2015) strongly suggest as
much. Low-latitude areas, however, are given short shrift by
most meteorological and climatological analyses. Given the
large populations that live near the Equator, more research
of the possible impact of anthropogenic global warming on
tropical cyclone behavior there is urgently needed.
www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/16/2683/2016/ Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 16, 2683–2695, 2016
2692 K. S. Rodolfo et al.: The December 2012 Mayo River debris flow
9 The NOAH national catalog of alluvial fans and
areas susceptible to debris flow
A positive outgrowth of the Andap disaster is the compila-
tion by NOAH of all alluvial fan areas in the Philippines
(Aquino et al., 2014). Alluvial fans were delineated from
high-resolution digital terrain models by analyzing geomor-
phic features, slopes, gradients and stream networks. So far,
more than 1200 alluvial fans have been identified throughout
the country, and communities under the threat of debris flows
are being educated about them. The results can be accessed
online for free in the NOAH portal at http://noah.dost.gov.ph.
In October 2015, Typhoon Koppu (Lando) generated dev-
astating debris flows on alluvial fans in the Nueva Ecija
province (Eco et al., 2015). Fortunately, communities living
on those alluvial fans had been warned and evacuated. No
one was killed. In December 2015, Typhoon Melor (Nona)
struck Mindoro in the central Philippines, also triggering
massive debris flows. Houses and buildings were buried or
washed out in several communities on alluvial fans, but no
one died because of timely warnings and evacuations (Llanes
et al., 2016).
10 Other climate-related hazards in the Philippines
and Mindanao
Future fluctuations between extreme El Niños and La Niñas
pose other threats. Philippine rainfall is modulated by ENSO;
El Niños bring droughts and La Niñas cause excessive rain-
fall (Lyon et al., 2006). During a protracted El Niño drought,
rock debris accumulates on slopes that heavy rains of the suc-
ceeding La Niña wash down, causing landslides and debris
flows. Additionally, excessive La Niña rainfall encourages
strong forest growth that a succeeding protracted drought
dries out and renders susceptible to fire.
Mindanao has 8 active (PHIVOLCS, 2008a) and 12 poten-
tially active volcanoes (PHIVOLCS, 2008b) that are popular
tourist destinations, productive geothermal areas and min-
ing districts. Many are situated in watersheds with impor-
tant agriculture and large populations. However, like Mount
Pinatubo on Luzon island before its disastrous 1990 erup-
tion, these volcanoes have not yet been fully studied or in-
strumentally monitored, and their populations are not used to
eruptions. As Table 1 shows, some of the world’s largest de-
bris flows are lahars generated on volcanoes by intense rain-
fall during an eruption or even decades afterwards. Whether
or not typhoons will visit Mindanao more frequently in fu-
ture, any large eruption there will inevitably be succeeded by
a major storm. Even without eruptions, Mindanao’s larger,
taller volcanoes pose serious threats, being structurally and
mechanically weak (Herrero, 2014) and are thus suscepti-
ble to landslides and debris flows during exceptionally strong
rainstorms.
11 Summary and conclusions
Bopha formed abnormally close to the Equator. It developed
into a Category 5 Super Typhoon and made landfall at record
proximities to the Equator for all tropical cyclones of that
category anywhere in the world. In only 7 h, it delivered more
than 120 mm of rain to the Mayo River watershed, generating
a debris flow that deposited a dry volume of 30 million m3,
the world’s seventh largest of record. The village of Andap
was devastated and 566 of its inhabitants were killed.
Debris flows are among the most lethal of natural hazards.
They are remarkably poorly recognized in the Philippines,
especially in Mindanao, which lies in the southern fringe of
the western North Pacific typhoon track and thus has been
infrequently visited by typhoons and debris flows. This un-
familiarity exacerbated the loss of life caused by the Mayo
River debris flow.
“Every health centre or school that collapses in an earth-
quake and every road or bridge that is washed away in a flood
began as development activities” (UNDP BCPR, 2004). The
people and government authorities who established New
Bataan and Andap in 1968 did not know that they were build-
ing on ancient debris-flow deposits, and they were unaware
of the hazardous process that produced the deposits. The lack
of awareness about debris flows persisted until Bopha ap-
proached, when many people were advised to seek refuge
from flooding on high ground in Andap. Even after the disas-
ter, the government personnel initially designated to explain
the tragedy and select relocation sites treated it as a “flash
flood”, not as a debris flow (MGB, 2012).
The rapid growth of the Philippine population provided the
impetus for the establishment of New Bataan and Andap in
the late 1960s. A Reproductive Health Care congressional
bill filed in 2003 was finally passed in 2012, though how
successful it will be in curbing population growth remains
to be seen. Meanwhile, the population continues to expand
into more areas susceptible to natural hazards. Drawing upon
Andap and numerous other recent disasters, the government
must more rigorously assess the hazards posed to new settle-
ment sites and infrastructure.
Western North Pacific tropical cyclone data have been
archived accurately since 1945. The frequency of Mindanao
landfalls has doubled since 1990, a possible indication that
anthropogenic global warming is making such events more
frequent. Learning whether this is true or not is obscured by
irregular climatic rhythms on the ENSO timescale of a few
years in the western North Pacific. Additionally, most tropi-
cal cyclones that affect Mindanao do not arrive in the main
typhoon season of July through October and most are only
tropical depressions, which most climatologists and meteo-
rologists do not include as data for their models. The typhoon
regimens of Mindanao and other, more densely populated
low-latitude areas need more attention.
Typhoons make Philippine landfalls most frequently dur-
ing La Niña episodes during the July–October main season.
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 16, 2683–2695, 2016 www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/16/2683/2016/
K. S. Rodolfo et al.: The December 2012 Mayo River debris flow 2693
In Mindanao, however, they arrive during the off season from
November to June. Current models suggest that extreme El
Niños and La Niñas will succeed each other more frequently,
a prime example of how Earth systems, kept in balance by
a myriad of interacting phenomena, fluctuate strongly when
disturbed. Thus, Mindanao and the Philippines as a whole
should prepare their populations for more frequent hazards
associated with these events, including landslides, debris
flows and forest fires.
Developing countries have difficulty funding mitigation
measures, and the best and least costly recourse is to en-
able each family to develop its own emergency plans, with
accurate, accessible, understandable and timely government
input. Among NOAH’s mandated tasks are evaluating the
numerous natural hazards that confront every region of the
Philippines, educating every community about the hazards
they face, and advising them on how to prepare and protect
themselves when the threats materialize. Thus, as a conse-
quence of our work on the Mayo debris flow, Project NOAH
has examined detailed topographic maps for the entire Philip-
pine archipelago and identified more than 1200 alluvial fans
and associated communities that may be threatened by debris
flows (Aquino et al., 2014). We have also simulated potential
flow paths of debris flows on all the alluvial fans and identi-
fied communities threatened by them. This work has already
helped to mitigate the effects of two major Philippine debris
flows in 2015.
Acknowledgements. This work was funded by the Philippine
Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and the Volcano
Tectonics laboratory of the National Institute of Geological
Sciences at the University of the Philippines (U.P.). Lidar data
covering the New Bataan area were provided by the U.P. Training
Center for Applied Geodesy and Photogrammetry. DOST’s Balik
(Returning) Scientist Program funded Kelvin S. Rodolfo’s travel.
We thank Eric Colmenares for helping coordinate our field work
and Jen Alconis, Yowee Gonzales, Jasmine Sabado and Yani
Serrado for their help in the field. We thank DOST’s Advanced
Science and Technology Institute and the Philippine Atmospheric,
Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration for rainfall
data, Congresswoman M. C. Zamora for logistical support and
Thomas Pierson for information about debris-flow mechanics.
Edited by: M. Parise
Reviewed by: two anonymous referees
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