Hopes fade for dozens buried by Mangkhut
Dozens of people believed buried in a landslide unleashed by Typhoon Mangkhut in the Philippines were unlikely to have survived, a mayor said yesterday. Still, rescuers kept digging through mud and debris covering a chapel where they had taken shelter.
Of the 40 to 50 miners and their families believed inside the chapel, there was a “99 per cent” chance that they all were killed, said Mayor Victorio Palangdan of Itogon, the Benguet province town that was among the hardest hit by the typhoon that struck Saturday.
Mangkhut already is confirmed to have killed 66 people in the Philippines and four in China, where it weakened to a tropical storm as it churned inland Monday.
Palangdan said rescuers have recovered 11 bodies from the muddy avalanche, which covered a former bunkhouse for the miners that had been turned into a chapel. Dozens of people sought shelter there during the storm despite warnings it was dangerous.
“They laughed at our policemen,” he said. “They were resisting when our police tried to pull them away. What can we do?”
Police and soldiers were among the hundreds of rescuers with shovels and picks searching for the missing along a mountainside as griefstricken relatives waited nearby, many of them praying quietly. Bodies in black bags were laid side by side. Those identified were carried away by relatives, some using crude bamboo slings.
More than 155,000 people remain in evacuation centres in the Philippines three days after Mangkhut — the world's most powerful storm this year — struck, said national police spokesman Benigno Durana.
Hong Kong began a massive cleanup Monday after the typhoon raked the city, shredding trees and bringing damaging floods in a trail of destruction.
The storm made landfall in mainland China early on Monday, killing four in Guangdong including three hit by falling trees.
Authorities there said they had evacuated more than three million people and ordered tens of thousands of fishing boats back to port before the arrival of what Chinese media dubbed the “King of Storms”.