Tandag, Bislig, Cantilan, Hinatuan and the towns of Surigao del Sur sit on a narrow strip between the Pacific and the Diwata range. Here is what to screen.
Surigao del Sur is long, narrow, and oriented north to south along the Pacific coast of Mindanao. The Diwata mountains rise close behind the shoreline, and the towns sit in the strip between them.
That arrangement produces three hazards in a small horizontal distance: coastal exposure, fast river response, and slope.
Tandag, Cortes, Cantilan, Carrascal, Lianga, Barobo, Hinatuan and Bislig all sit on or near the water, facing east into open ocean.
Screen mapped storm surge exposure against elevation as one answer. On any coast, ground height matters more than distance from the shoreline, and on an exposed one it matters more still.
This coast also faces the Philippine Trench. PHIVOLCS is the authority on earthquake and tsunami information, and a hazard screening does not rate tsunami. The practical preparation is the same as anywhere on an exposed coast: know where the nearest genuinely higher ground is, know how long it takes on foot, and treat strong shaking as its own instruction to move. The difference between the two phenomena is in tsunami and storm surge are not the same thing.
The Diwata range sits close to the sea, so rivers here are short and steep. Rain in the uplands reaches the coastal towns quickly.
This region also receives rain through much of the year, with the wettest stretch during the amihan and shear line months when much of the country is drying. See the shear line.
Screen flood susceptibility and the distance to the nearest mapped waterway together, and check the debris flow and alluvial fan flags wherever a steep valley opens onto the coastal flat.
The uplands here have been logged and mined in places, and both change how a slope sheds water and supplies material. You cannot screen historical land use, and you can look at it: on a satellite view, and on the ground, on the drive in.
For any address on or below slope, read slope with mapped landslide susceptibility, and walk uphill from the property to see what is above it.
The coastal highway is the spine of the province. A single failed crossing or slope isolates a stretch of it.
Drive the route to the nearest hospital and count the crossings. Ask which section goes first. This is not a technicality here, it is what the rainy months are like. See the house is fine, the road is not.
Surigao del Sur sees fewer direct typhoon landfalls than the eastern Visayas, and it gets a great deal of rain. So the question that produces useful answers is not "when was the last typhoon" but "when did it last rain for a week, and what happened".
People answer that precisely, because it is a feature of most years rather than a rare event.
A hazard screening reads public national datasets at a point and reports mapped susceptibility, elevation, slope, and distances. It does not rate tsunami, see upstream land use change, or measure soil at depth. PHIVOLCS, the MGB regional office, and a licensed geotechnical engineer cover what it cannot.
CheckHazard does not replace a professional geotechnical or engineering survey.