Tragedy strikes disaster-prone Leyte island again
SOME of the Philippines' worst disasters -- and one of the country's biggest moments in history -- have involved Leyte, one of the largest of the archipelago's 7,100 islands.
Hundreds may have been killed when a landslide Friday buried an entire farming village in thick mud and house-sized boulders.
Leyte etched its place in history after it was chosen by General Douglas MacArthur as the beachhead for his return to the Philippines, a former US colony, to liberate the country from Japanese troops in 1944.
The famous October 20, 1944, Leyte landing by MacArthur fulfilled his "I shall return" promise to the Philippines, and preceded the October 22-27 Battle of Leyte Gulf that involved more than 730 ships in one of history's largest naval battles.
Leyte's most famous daughter, former first lady Imelda Marcos, said she entertained MacArthur and liberation troops by singing for them.
More recently, the island has been linked to disasters, both natural and manmade.
In December 1987, the ferry MV Dona Paz -- carrying passengers from Leyte and nearby Samar island to Manila -- sank after colliding with a fuel tanker in the central Philippines, killing 4,340 people. It was considered the worst peacetime shipping disaster.
In October the following year, the Paz's sister ship, Dona Marilyn, which was sailing from Manila to Leyte, sank during a typhoon, killing about 250 people.
Tragedy struck the island again in November 1991 when a flash flood swept down from the hills into Ormoc city on the western side of Leyte, killing about 6,000 people. A landslide in San Francisco, in southern Leyte province in December 2003, killed 133 people.
The island, about 560 kilometers (350 miles) southeast of Manila, is in the path of most of the typhoons that sweep from the Southern Pacific to the Philippines, and its southern portion experiences rainfall most of the year.
