Distraught survivors searched piles of bodies for the faces of their loved ones in the central Philippines on Saturday after landslides triggered by Typhoon Durian left hundreds dead.
Driving rain and winds of up to 225kph dislodged tonnes of mud and boulders from the slopes of Mount Mayon, an active volcano about 320km south of Manila, on Thursday smothering nearby villages in a three-hour torrent.
The office of civil defence said 208 people had been killed and 261 were missing in the rural Bicol region. Officials said the toll was rising by the minute as rescue workers, some using their bare hands, pulled corpses and body parts from the mud.
”It’s already in the hundreds just covering four areas,” Cedric Daep, head of the provincial disaster coordinating council told Reuters.
”Right now we are on retrieval operations. We do not believe there are any survivors.”
Nearly 30 000 people were left homeless and whole communities were isolated as power lines and phone links were knocked out, bridges washed away and roads blocked by uprooted coconut trees, twisted metal roofs and tonnes of mud.
Durian moved into the South China Sea on Friday after affecting nearly half a million people in the Philippines and was expected to weaken into a tropical storm before hitting Vietnam on Monday
‘They are gone’
In the town of Daraga, bordering Mount Mayon, more than 50 bodies lay in stacks in front of an overflowing funeral parlour. The undertaker estimated there were around 150 corpses in all.
Photographs of the missing lined the town square and men and women, many clutching handkerchiefs over their faces, searched for relatives among the dead.
”My siblings, my mother, they are gone. My niece is dead and at the plaza there are so many dead people,” said one woman, sobbing in the morning sunshine.
Communities around Mayon thought they had escaped catastrophe in September when the volcano subsided after months spewing flaming lava and rocks, raising fears of a major eruption and forcing thousands of residents to evacuate.
The debris left behind proved deadly when Durian dislodged it.
Thousands of survivors crammed into schools and churches and disaster agencies called for fresh water, rice and more body bags. Miners were due at the disaster zones to help soldiers and rescue workers dig through the mud.
Named after a pungent and spiky Asian fruit, Durian was the fourth to hit the Philippines in three months. Forecasters expect one more before the end of the year.
In September, 213 people were killed when Typhoon Xangsane battered the north and centre of the country, leaving millions without electricity or running water for days.
Xangsane also killed dozens in Vietnam. – Reuters