Wed, Feb 22, 2006 page5

• Landslide's victims all but lost

  PHILIPPINE TRAGEDY Although they are trying to remain positive, rescue workers have cautioned relatives of missing persons to be realistic

  • AFP
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  Rescuers yesterday dug down towards a buried school during their search for some 1,400 people entombed by a Philippine landslide, but said it was time to face the truth that the missing must now be dead.

  "It is good to hope but relatives of those missing should by now already know the reality," said Hector Reyes, leader of the Philippine Canine Search and Rescue Team.

  A Malaysian team operating remote sensing probes had reported sounds on Monday but it was unclear whether they were made by humans. They and a Taiwanese team with similar equipment heard nothing yesterday.

  "It is a fact that in this type of disaster people trapped may already be dead," said Malaysian team leader Yaacob Yusuf. "It is not good to keep [relatives] hoping."

  Four days after a mountainside toppled onto the verdant farming village of Guinsaugon on Leyte Island and wiped it off the map, an international rescue effort was getting into top gear -- despite muddy terrain made even more treacherous by rain and the slim hopes of survivors.

  "The rain just kept pounding last night. The mud was real difficult to navigate and walk on," US Marine Bowie Trent said.

  "Our main obstacle now is the terrain. It changed overnight."

  US Marines and Philippine troops, after waiting for directions from the probe teams, resumed digging yesterday afternoon above the school where 240 children and staff are feared buried.

  But there was no estimate of when they would unearth the building even though rescuers are confident they have found the spot where it is buried.

  Friday's landslide, triggered by two weeks of abnormally heavy rain, is thought to have torn the school from its foundations and pushed it to a new location.

  With aid and specialist equipment and trucks pouring in from around the world, the biggest obstacle was the weather. Despite heavy rain the search continued late into the night Monday after emergency lighting was installed.

  But the rain reshaped the sea of mud that now covers the village to an extent of 9km2. Malaysian, American and Filipino rescuers had to use a big log to bridge a creek that had sprung up overnight.

  The civil defense office in Manila put the latest confirmed death toll at 84. Some 400 people who were out of the village when disaster struck survived, leaving an estimated 1,400 buried. Only about 20 were pulled alive from the slide.

  Rudy Duhiling, 28, a coconut harvester, was collecting copra on the mountainside last Friday.

  "I thought I was dead. I was just 100m away when the earth began moving. In seconds, the rolling rubble had hit my home. The coconut trees rushed down the mountainside," he said.

  "I yelled to the other copra harvesters and they ran out. I told them the earth had slid and that we must go, our homes have been destroyed.

  "We descended and found a desert," Duhiling said. While his wife and child survived, he lost his mother and 20 other relatives.

  "I have no idea what I will do now," he said.

  Aid has poured in from all over the world.

  The US military has committed about 2,500 to 3,000 troops to the rescue and relief operation to join Philippine military and civilian rescuers, Malaysians, Taiwanese and others. A Spanish canine unit was the latest to arrive.

  An operations center across the Lawigan River from the devastated village was taking on a more permanent air, with Marines installing bigger tents. Rocks were laid to stabilize the ground.

  US President George W. Bush on Monday offered Philippine President Gloria Arroyo his condolences and promises of sustained US help.

  Arroyo, who thanked the world for its aid, said she would visit the scene today.
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