About 200 people were believed killed and 1 500 others were missing in the central Philippines on Friday when a landslide buried an entire village, the Red Cross said.
Eyewitnesses said only a few houses were left standing after the side of a mountain collapsed and slammed into the village of Guinsaugon in the south of the Philippine island of Leyte.
”There are about 1 500 missing, 200 dead,” Richard Gordon, the head of the Philippine Red Cross, said in a radio interview.
The first footage from the devastated village showed a sea of mud covering what had been lush green valley farmland. The mud was estimated to be at least 6m deep.
Only a few sheets of tin roofing and the occasional coconut tree could be seen. Tiny groups of mud-spattered survivors were also shown, walking through the muck, apparently stunned by the scope of the destruction.
Among those feared buried in the mire were nearly 250 children and adults in the village school, officials said.
In a televised address to the nation, President Gloria Arroyo said rescue teams were rushing to the area from ”air, land and sea” to cope with the catastrophe.
”I have ordered the coast guard and our entire naval force in the [central Philippines] region to the area,” she said. ”Naval ships will be used as floating hospitals and command centres for relief and rescue.”
A United States naval vessel taking part in military exercises in the former US naval base of Subic, north of Manila, will be diverted to the stricken village to help in the rescue and relief operations, the US embassy said.
Leyte Governor Rosette Lerias said the last census showed there were 375 houses with 3 000 people living in Guinsaugon before the landslide. She described the village as totally flattened.
”It was like mud running down the mountain and it covered the village in seconds,” she said, quoting survivors.
Experts blamed deforestation for the tragedy, which came after days of rainfall that was five times higher than usual.
Lerias said that many Guinsaugon residents had been evacuated after landslides earlier in the week had killed more than 20 people on Leyte, but that many had returned on Friday because the rains had stopped and the sun had come out.
A mild, 2,6-magnitude earthquake that struck before the landslide may also have helped set off the wall of mud that crashed down on the village, said Rene Solidum, head of the government vulcanology office.
”The area could have really been ready for a landslide because of the amount of rainfall, and if there was a minor earthquake, it might have hastened it,” Solidum said.
Army Colonel Nestor Sadirin, head of a rescue task force, said 16 bodies had been recovered so far and 100 people rescued.
Leyte Congressman Roger Mercado said in a radio interview that the village had a population of 3 000 to 4 000 and expressed fears that as many as 2 000 people had been buried.
Lerias called for more rescuers to come to the site to help look for bodies as heavy earth-moving equipment could not work in the mud, which officials said was more than 6m deep in many areas.
Volunteer rescue teams from the country’s mining companies, skilled in digging through the earth to rescue people, were also going to the area, said Arroyo.
Gordon said the Red Cross was trying to dispatch sniffer dogs to hunt for survivors.
Military helicopters were able to reach the area despite heavy clouds, but the flights ceased after nightfall because the aircraft did not have night-flying capabilities.
Lerias said a smaller landslide later in the afternoon caused no damage but left many of the rescuers worried about a possible new disaster.
Much of the rescue effort had to be called off after nightfall because there were no lights and because ”the soil was very unstable,” said civil defence spokesperson Anthony Golez.
Relief groups called for drinking water, food, blankets and body bags to be brought to the scene.
Provincial board member Eva Dumol said in a radio interview that heavy equipment that was already in the area to clear up earlier landslides was being sent to the Guinasaugon area.
More than 5 000 people were killed in a combined flood and mudslide on Leyte in November 1991. — AFP
