A rain-soaked mountainside disintegrated in an unstoppable wall of mud yesterday, burying hundreds of houses and an elementary school in the eastern Philippines. Red Cross officials estimated 200 people were dead and 1,500 others missing.
"It sounded like the mountain exploded, and the whole thing crumbled," survivor Dario Libatan told Manila radio DZMM. "I could not see any house standing anymore."
The farming village of Guinsaugon on Leyte island, 670km southeast of Manila, was virtually wiped out, with only a few jumbles of corrugated steel sheeting left to show that the community of some 2,500 people ever existed.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF ABS-CBN/VIA REUTERS TV
Two other villages also were affected, and about 3,000 evacuees were 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."
The mud was so deep -- up to 10m in some places -- and unstable that rescue workers had difficulty approaching the school. Education officials said 200 students, six teachers and the principal were believed to have been there.
Senator Richard Gordon, head of the Philippine Red Cross, issued the casualty estimates and made an international appeal for aid. The provincial governor asked for people to dig by hand, saying the mud was too soft for heavy equipment.
There appeared to be little hope for finding many survivors, and only 53 were extricated from the brown morass before dark halted rescue efforts for the night, officials said.
"It was like the whole village was wiped out," said air force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Restituto Padilla.
Aerial TV footage showed a wide swath of mud amid stretches of rice paddies at the foothills of the now-scarred mountain, where survivors blamed illegal logging for contributing to the disaster.
Rescue workers dug with shovels for signs of survivors, and put a child on a stretcher, with little more than the girl's eyes showing through a covering of mud.
"Let us all pray for those who perished and were affected by this tragedy," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a statement.
"Help is on the way," she promised survivors. "You will soon be out of harm's way."
Gordon appealed for US troops, in the country for joint military exercises, to send helicopters to the disaster site.
The US embassy said a US naval vessel was en route to the disaster area and Philippine disaster officials were being consulted on coordinating chopper deployment.
Volunteers from nearby provinces were quickly being joined by groups of troops being ferried in by helicopter, with more en route by sea.
Army Captain Edmund Abella said he and about 30 soldiers from his unit were soaking wet from wading through mud up to their waists. Flash floods also were inundating the area, and the rumble of a secondary landslide sent rescuers scurrying for safety.
"The people said the ground suddenly shook, then a part of the mountain collapsed onto the village," Abella told reporters by cell phone. "Some houses were carried by the mudflow, some were destroyed and other were buried.
"It's very difficult, we're digging by hand, the place is so vast and the mud is so thick. When we try to walk, we get stuck in the mud," Abella said.
He said the troops had just rescued a 43-year-old woman.
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