This tragedy comes close on the heels of a man-made incident in which 74 people died at the Feb. 4 stampede at the former Ultra stadium in Pasig City while seeking entry to a popular game show staged by the ABS-CBN network.

But there is a more earthly explanation to the Leyte mudslide.

“The real reason for this terrible tragedy is that forests have been badly denuded and no serious replanting has been done,” Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales said in a statement to the press last Sunday.

What the prelate and newly installed cardinal said is known to almost every Filipino with passing knowledge of country’s condition.

In fact, a logging ban has been in effect for years but, as is true with most laws, it has been enforced only selectively, if at all. It’s plain for all to see that powerful politicians are behind the flourishing illegal logging, either as protectors or outright operators themselves.

In hindsight (as is usually the case), the catastrophe could have been averted. An evacuation was ordered last year after the government had declared the village of Guinsaugon in the town of Saint Bernard one of at least 1,000 danger zones in the country.

The warning, however, went unheeded by many villagers. What did the government expect the residents to do? Leave their farms and go hungry and without a place to stay? So they trudged back home, leading up to their untimely and grisly death. We mourn in particular the school children who perished en masse.

Other residents in danger zones like those living near the slope of Mayon Volcano in Bicol and Taal Volcano in Batangas also face the same predicament. But they doggedly stay on for want of a place to relocate.

Clearly, the government must address this present and imminent danger to its citizens in disaster-prone areas. Upgrading its geographical hazard maps is not enough.

What is needed is a political will to enforce, without fear or favor, the ban on illegal logging. That’s a start.