Rescue workers in the Philippines refused to give up hope of finding survivors in an elementary school buried by up to 35m of mud, digging into the night on Monday after detecting what the provincial governor called “signs of life”.
Under the glare of generator-powered lights, a multinational group of troops and technicians used high-tech gear such as seismic sensors and sound- and heat-detection equipment alongside shovels and rescue dogs.
It was hard to imagine survivors under the wet muck more than three days after a mountainside collapsed and covered the farming village of Guinsaugon, killing up to 1 000 people. No one has been pulled out alive since just a few hours after the disaster on Friday morning.
But South Leyte Governor Rosette Lerias said the chances of life jumped from just 1% when United States and Malaysian forces picked up sounds of scratching and a rhythmic tapping.
“To me, that’s more than enough reason to smile and be happy,” Lerias said. “The adrenaline is high … now that we have seen increasing signs of life.”
The search has focused on the school because of unconfirmed reports that some of the 250 to 300 children and teachers may have sent SMSs to relatives soon after the disaster on Friday.
A US military spokesperson said late on Monday that US marines digging at the site had found bodies, but no survivors.
“I asked had they received or found any type of survivors, and the answer was no,” US marine Captain Burrell Parmer said after speaking to the commander of US forces at the disaster site.
The statement discounted an earlier report by Philippine Interior Undersecretary Marius Corpus that US marines had found 50 survivors. There was no immediate explanation for how the false report had spread.
“There is a lot of rubble, a lot of large boulders,” Parmer said. “On some sides near the river, it’s very moist, very soft soil, and you can get stuck up to … your waistline if you’re not careful.”
Still, the marines were anxious to discover the origin of sounds detected by seismic sensors.
“The farther down we went, the signals grew stronger,” US marine Lieutenant Richard Neikirk said as he pointed to a spot under a big boulder. A Malaysian team using sound-detection gear picked up noises, too.
“We have a sound,” said Sahar Yunos, of the Malaysia disaster and rescue team. “Knocking, something like that.”
A rescue dog also stopped three times at one spot away from where rescue workers were digging.
There was no visible sign of the school. Rescue workers were digging at two places — one where the school was believed to have sat close to the mountain, the other 200m down the hill, where the landslide could have carried it.
Dozens of US marines and Philippine soldiers, along with local miners, were digging in a watery, boulder-strewn spot around the school’s original site, using shovels on the muck and moving it with body bags, while draining the murky water in large bottles.
The search was a painstaking process as the crews went metre by metre. At one of the highest points, local troops planted a Philippine flag.
The marines deployed nine seismic sensors that can detect vibrations underground. With everyone standing still, one man then used a steel bar to hit on a rock several times and waited for any kind of response underground. Four sensors detected some “noise” or vibration, but the men could not tell what it was.
They were followed by the 15-man Malaysian team using sensor gear called Delsar and employing similar techniques.
Five Taiwanese, who brought heat-imaging equipment, arrived to check for signs of life, too. Rescuers were radioing for water pumps and floodlights to continue working through the night.
Some officials were talking about leaving the village as a massive cemetery, similar to tsunami-ravaged areas elsewhere in South-East Asia where digging out bodies was simply too difficult and dangerous. With no one left to claim them, unidentified bodies already are being buried in mass graves.
“We will still search continuously, but we should be prepared that … you’re going to have a mass grave right there,” said Senator Richard Gordon, chairperson of the Philippine Red Cross. “How can you retrieve those who were buried so deep?”
Philippine military officials had feared 1 800 people, virtually the entire population of Guinsaugon, died. But Lerias said on Monday that 82 people were confirmed dead and 928 were missing. — Sapa-AP
Associated Press writer Hrvoje Hranjski contributed to this report from Guinsaugon