Mudslide: ‘every second counts’
TRAGEDY: BARE-HANDED RESCUERS CLAW THROUGH MUD
‘There’s a chance’ as one is saved after 11 hours.
Rescuers used their bare hands and shovels to dig through mud yesterday in a desperate search for survivors of a landslide in the Philippines as the number of missing and dead climbed, an official said.
Two days after the rain-induced landslide hit the mountainous gold-mining village of Masara on southern Mindanao island, searchers were in a race against time and weather.
The landslide destroyed houses and engulfed three buses and a jeepney waiting for workers from a gold mine on Tuesday night.
With the dweath toll climbing, at least 90 people are missing, disaster agency official Edward Macapili of Davao de Oro province said, citing police data.
“It is everybody’s hope that people are still alive,” Macapili said.
“Our rescue team is in a hurry because every second counts when it comes to human life.”
The landslide left a deep, brown gouge down the mountain. Rescuers pulled a person alive from the mud 11 hours after it hit, Macapili said.
“So there’s a chance,” he added. Police, soldiers and rescuers from Davao de Oro and the adjacent Davao del Norte province have been deployed to Masara to help the search and retrieval operation.
While rescuers were using heavy earth-moving equipment in places, they had to rely on their bare hands and shovels in areas where they believed there were bodies, Macapili said.
“The soil that covered the buses was very thick – it could almost cover a two-storey building.”
At least 20 mine workers are believed to be entombed in the vehicles.
Landslides are frequent hazards across much of the archipelago nation owing to the mountainous terrain, heavy rainfall and widespread deforestation from mining, slash-and-burn farming and illegal logging.
Rain has pounded parts of Mindanao for weeks, triggering dozens of landslides and flooding that have forced tens of thousands of people into shelters.
Hundreds of families from Masara and four nearby villages had to evacuate their homes and shelter in emergency centres for fear of further landslides. –