Guinsaugon, Philippines – Standing in a light drizzle, the handful of mourners didn’t know any of the 30 people laid side by side in a mass grave Sunday as workers began burying the few victims recovered since a mammoth mudslide wiped out this farming village.
Anyone who could have identified the bodies was likely under a carpet of muck up to 30 feet deep, and hopes all but evaporated that more survivors would be found.
Only about two dozen battered, dazed people have been rescued from the debris left by Friday’s disaster, which left some 1,800 people missing and presumed dead.
Weary search teams found more than a dozen bodies Sunday, raising the number of confirmed deaths to 72. With no one left to claim the dead and bodies quickly starting to decompose in the tropical heat, officials ordered them buried in mass graves.
Twenty more bodies were to be buried today.
Hopes waned each hour as no more survivors were found for a second straight day.
A woman who escaped the destruction said the first inkling of the disaster was a mild shaking of the ground, followed by a loud boom and a roar that sounded like many airplanes.
“I looked up to the mountain, and I saw the ground and boulders rushing down,” said Alicia Miravalles.
She said she ran across her family’s rice field ahead of the wall of mud and boulders.
“I thought I was dead,” she said. “If the landslide did not stop, I would really be dead now.”
Two shiploads of U.S. Marines arrived off Leyte island Sunday to help, diverted from military exercises elsewhere in the Philippines. A unit of 32 started digging at the school, and 200 Marines had come ashore by sunset. Hundreds more were expected today.
The hunt for survivors focused on the school after unconfirmed reports circulated that some of those inside had sent text messages to loved ones after the mountainside collapsed following two weeks of heavy rains.
Officials had said 57 survivors were pulled from the mud Friday but on Sunday lowered the number to 20 without explanation.
Spirits rose briefly at the school site Sunday when Malaysian soldiers with sound-detecting gear reported movement below the mud.
But with nothing else to indicate life, they had to admit the noise could have been settling mud.
