Guinsaugon, Philippines – Rescue workers held little hope Saturday of finding more survivors of a devastating landslide that killed an estimated 1,800 people, saying this farming village in the eastern Philippines was swallowed whole by a wall of mud and boulders.
Education officials said 250 students and teachers were believed to have been at an elementary school at the time. Only one girl and a woman were rescued alive nearby.
Survivors and others blamed persistent rains and illegal logging for Friday’s disaster.
Lt. Col. Raul Farnacio, the highest-ranking military officer at the scene, estimated the death toll at about 1,800 – nearly every man, woman and child who lived in Guinsaugon, about 400 miles east of the capital, Manila.
“Out of a population of 1,857, we have 57 survivors and 19 bodies,” a grim Farnacio said as search efforts resumed Saturday in a drenching rain and high winds that made the task even more miserable. “We presume … more or less, that 1,800 are feared dead.”
Farnacio said the troops were digging only where they saw clear evidence of bodies because of the danger that the soft, unstable mud could shift and claim new victims.
“We can only focus on the surface,” he said. “We cannot go too deep.”
Low clouds hung over the area, obscuring the mountain that disintegrated Friday morning after two weeks of heavy rains, covering the village’s 375 homes and elementary school. Rescue workers trudged slowly through the sludge, stretchers and ambulances waiting for survivors or the bodies of victims.
The landslide left Guinsaugon, which is on the southern part of Leyte island, looking like a giant patch of newly plowed land.
Only a few jumbles of corrugated steel sheeting indicate Guinsaugon ever existed.
“Our village is gone; everything was buried in mud,” survivor Eugene Pilo, who lost his family, told local media Friday. “All the people are gone.”
“It sounded like the mountain exploded, and the whole thing crumbled,” said fellow survivor Dario Libatan, who lost his wife and three children. “I could not see any house standing anymore.”
A helicopter pilot, Leo Dimaala, estimated that half the mountain collapsed Friday morning.
Two other villages also were affected, and about 3,000 evacuees huddled at a municipal hall.
“We did not find injured people,” said Ricky Estela, a crewman on a helicopter that flew a politician to the scene. “Most of them are dead and beneath the mud.”
On Friday, rescue workers put a child on a stretcher, with little more than the girl’s eyes showing through a covering of mud.
Aerial TV footage showed a wide swath of mud alongside stretches of green rice paddies at the foothills of the scarred mountain. Army Capt. Edmund Abella said he and about 30 soldiers were wading through waist-deep mud.
“It’s very difficult, we’re digging by hand, the place is so vast and the mud is so thick,” Abella told The Associated Press by cellphone. “When we try to walk, we get stuck in the mud.”
He said the troops had just rescued a 43-year-old woman.
“She was crying and looking for her three nephews, but they were nowhere to be found,” Abella said.
“Help is on the way,” President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in televised remarks. “It will come from land, sea and air.”
The Philippine Red Cross had 14 people on the ground dealing with rescue efforts and the recovery of bodies. More staff and trained volunteers were being sent to the region, along with dog rescue teams.
A relief plane was flying from Manila carrying 1,000 body bags, emergency trauma kits to help 1,000 people, rubber boots, ropes, clothing, flashlights and medicine.
The international Red Cross launched an emergency appeal for $1.5 million for relief operations. The funds will be used for buying temporary shelter materials and other emergency health and cooking items.
