1,350 missing in landslide -- rescue office

BY JASON GUTIERREZ The Office of Civil Defense yesterday said 1,350 people were missing after a massive landslide buried a village in the central island of Leyte. The office said 72 bodies had been recovered from the nine-square kilometer expanse of Friday’s landslip that obliterated the village of Guinsaugon in Southern Leyte. A separate tally by the St. Bernard municipal hall placed the number of recovered bodies at 84. According to the civil defense office, 434 people had survived the disaster, including 19 who sustained injuries. The last survivors were pulled from the muck within hours of the tragedy on Friday and the 415 others were away from their village when the disaster struck. It also said 3,268 families or 10,342 individuals from 16 villages in St. Bernard town had been evacuated due to possible landslide occurrence. In Guinsaugon, American and Taiwanese rescuers joined Philippine teams yesterday in a search for survivors three days after a massive landslide buried the community, but were struggling to pinpoint landmarks in a vast sea of mud. A 30-strong Taiwanese specialist team waded through mud and debris to try to locate the school where some 200 pupils and 40 teachers were buried under tons of mud and rock, in the now slim hope of finding any survivors. Some 70 Malaysian medics and an advance party of US Marines were also in Guinsaugon village in Leyte, which was wiped off the map on Friday morning when a mountainside collapsed after two weeks of heavy rain. Around 3,000 American soldiers, more than half of the troops participating in war games exercises in Mindanao, were redirected to the landslide-ravaged town of Southern Leyte to help in the search and rescue operations. Joseph Chang, a foreign ministry official coordinating the Taiwanese effort, told AFP they would try to locate the school. "Local rescue teams have managed to pinpoint where the school once stood but they may be focusing on the wrong area," Mr. Chang said. "In a landslide the crush of mud and boulders would have pushed the building away. Rescuers have gone to maps of where the building once stood but the building may no longer be on that spot." His team has sonar and video equipment and will comb an area below where the school once stood. "We will try to do our best to look for bodies and possible survivors. We have had a lot of experience in this sort of thing." Several officials conceded there was little hope of still finding anyone alive under a carpet of mud and rocks up to 30 meters deep in some places and covering a nine-square kilometer area. "It is unlikely anyone could have survived under 30 meters of mud for three days," said one official, declining to be identified. "There appears to be no sign of life at the moment. Any oxygen that may have been trapped in spaces may have been finished off." He said the search now was for bodies, not survivors, but added: "Manila would have to make that call." Two officials in the area gave similar assessments last Sunday. US Marines with shovels and picks joined local rescuers as a backhoe tried to clear a path. Rescuers found a structure that they believed could be a chapel and marked it with a Philippine flag. Canine units and Philippine soldiers were working elsewhere but said heavy overnight rain had changed the contours of the devastated landscape. "Yesterday we placed markers on an area which we thought was the school, using a triangulation method, but right now you can’t see the markers. It has changed drastically," said Hector Reyes, team leader of the Philippine Canine Search and Rescue Team, operating under the Red Cross. "There’s still water under the rubble and it’s very dangerous. Anytime, any of the mounds could collapse." The tragedy has prompted an international outpouring of sympathy for the disaster-prone nation. Canada said it was preparing to send help while the Greek government offered more than $350,000, the latest in a string of countries or international agencies to offer aid. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan extended a helping hand to the government as he expressed sympathy to the victims of the landslide. The New York-based United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) will be deploying a contingent to Manila to boost search and rescue operations. The OCHA has released a $50,000 emergency grant to the Office of the Resident Coordinator in Manila for emergency response coordination. Multilateral lending agencies Asian Development Bank and the World Bank have both offered help. In separate statements, the two agencies said they were willing to provide financial aid for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Guinsaugon. -BusinessWorld