Desperate dig for landslide victims
● Rescuers in Philippines in painstaking search for buried villagers while Hong Kong mops up after devastating typhoon
Philippine rescuers used shovels and their bare hands to claw through mounds of rocky soil on Monday as they desperately looked for dozens of people feared buried beneath a landslide unleashed by Typhoon Mangkhut.
Searchers have already pulled 11 bodies from the vast debris field in Itogon, in the disaster-hit nation’s north.
Up to 40 may still be buried, with little hope of survivors.
“We believe that those people there, maybe 99%, are already dead,” Itogon mayor Victorio Palangdan said.
He added later: “It will continue until they [searchers] surrender. There are relatives among the rescuers who are still hoping they will be able to find their kin alive.”
A massive hillside, weakened by the monster storm’s lashing rains, collapsed on the miners’ bunkhouse about half a kilometre below.
Mangkhut, the world’s most powerful storm this year, pounded the Philippines at the weekend with torrential rains and violent winds that snapped utility poles and sheared roofs off homes.
Authorities say dozens died in the storm, mostly buried in landslides in the mountainous regions in the north of Luzon, the Philippines’ largest island.
With damaged roads preventing the entry of heavy equipment, hundreds of rescuers in rows formed a human chain to pass rocks, debris and tree trunks out of the search area in Itogon.
Residents of the remote town, in the Cordillera range about 200km north of Manila, had sought refuge in the building to avoid the wrath of Mangkhut.
The two-storey structure was an old bunkhouse abandoned by a gold mining firm at an area that has since been settled by small-time miners, Palangdan said.
Recovered bodies were lined up in a row at a makeshift tent on a nearby road above the bunkhouse.
Landslides and flooding elsewhere in the Philippines forced nearly 200,000 people to flee their homes, according to a police tally.
More than 155,000 remained in evacuation centres two days after the storm struck, national police spokesperson Benigno Durana said.
Weeks of heavy monsoon downpours had already left hillsides unstable in the region.
Crescencio Bacalso, the governor of Benguet, a province that includes Itogon, also cited a tragic case in Baguio, the region’s largest city, where smallscale miners were helping to find a woman whose house had been buried.
“Unfortunately, there was a second collapse and the responders themselves became victims of a landslide,” he said.
“Six of them managed to crawl out but two are missing.”
Farms across northern Luzon, which produces much of the nation’s rice and corn, were under muddy floodwater, their crops ruined just a month before harvest.
After tearing through Luzon and pummelling Hong Kong and Macau, the storm made landfall in mainland China late on Sunday. It killed four people in Guangdong province, 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 typhoon’s arrival.
In the high-rise city of Hong Kong, the government described the damage as severe and extensive, with more than 300 people injured.
The huge task of cleaning up the city began on Monday as residents struggled to get back to work on roads blocked by trees, mud and debris.
Bus services were halted and commuters piled onto platforms trying to board infrequent trains after trees fell on overhead power lines. Schools will remain closed on Tuesday.
Landslides and severe flooding affected some areas, with some 1,500 residents seeking refuge in temporary shelters overnight.
Emergency teams were sawing up some of the biggest trees blocking roads and pathways in a clean-up operation that is likely to take days.
In the neighbouring gambling enclave of Macau, all 42 casinos shut down for the first time in its history as the storm approached.
They opened again on Monday but Macau was still in recovery mode after severe flooding hit parts of the city.