On Monday, Filipino rescuers clawed their way through mounds of rocky earth with shovels and bare hands, desperately trying to find dozens of individuals believed to be buried under a landslide triggered by Typhoon Mangkhut. Authorities said the storm’s confirmed death toll was 66, however it was expected to be higher.
Searchers have already recovered 11 bodies from an enormous debris field in Itogon, within the north of the disaster-hit country. There are perhaps as much as 40 people still buried and there’s little hope of them surviving.
“We believe these people, maybe 99 percent, are already dead,” Itogon Mayor Victorio Palangdan told reporters. “This will continue until they (searchers) give up. There are relatives among the rescuers who still hope to find their living relatives.”
The massive hillside, weakened by heavy rains from the terrible storm, collapsed onto the miners’ bunker about 500 meters below.
“If I try to do my part, I will close down all the mines in the Philippines,” Duterte said during a televised meeting of the federal government’s disaster response team.
Mangkhut, the world’s strongest storm this yr, lashed the Philippines over the weekend with heavy rains and fierce winds that tore down poles and ripped roofs off houses.
Authorities say dozens of individuals died within the storm, most buried in landslides in mountainous regions in northern Luzon, the Philippines’ largest island.
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Hundreds of rescue staff lined up in rows to form a human chain to clear rocks, debris and tree stumps from the search area in Itogon.
The massive landslide left a gaping wound on a green hillside dotted with small houses topped with rusting metal roofs.
Since the roads prevented heavy equipment from entering, soldiers, police, and miners also used shovels and drained water from a close-by stream to loosen the earth.
It was incredibly slow work as anguished relatives watched and waited for news about their missing family members.
Residents of the distant town, within the Cordillera, about 200 km (125 miles) north of Manila, sought refuge within the constructing to avoid Mangkhut’s wrath.
Palangdan said the two-story structure was an old bunker abandoned by a gold mining company in an area that has since been settled by small-scale miners.
The recovered bodies were wrapped in cloth and placed in a row in a makeshift tent on a close-by road above the bunker.
On Monday, Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Roy Cimatu ordered a halt to all small-scale mining within the Cordillera region.
Landslides and floods elsewhere within the Philippines have forced nearly 200,000 people to flee their homes, based on police data.
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On Sunday, Duterte and government officials flew to the hard-hit area of Cagayan. During a televised briefing, he said: “I share the sadness of those who have lost their loved ones. These [are what] we call unforeseen events. In insurance, it is an act of God. “I don’t know how it can be God’s work, but that’s the term the insurer uses.”
Weeks of heavy monsoon rainfall have already caused hillside instability in the region.
Crescencio Bacalso, governor of Benguet, the province that includes Itogon, also cited a tragic case in Baguio, the region’s largest city, where small-scale miners helped find a woman whose house was buried.
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“Unfortunately, a second collapse occurred and the rescuers themselves became victims of the landslide. Six of them managed to crawl out, but two others are missing,” he added.
“Just before Mangkhut arrived, it had been raining for a month, so the ground was waterlogged, which led to erosion and landslides,” Bacalso said.
Agence France-Presse, Kyodo, Reuters, The Guardian
This article appeared within the print edition of the South China Morning Post as: Hurry to seek out dozens of individuals feared buried after Mangkhut
