ManilaMailDC.Net - US, World Aid Leyte Mudslide Victims

TACLOBAN, Leyte — The United States, Japan and other nations lend the Philippine government a helping hand as it struggled to aid the victims and assist in the recovery of more than 1,100 who are feared dead after mudslides buried three villages of St. Bernard in the southern part of this province Feb. 17.

The mountains around the hardest hit villages of Guinsajogon, Sugangon and Kabakan in the town of St. Bernard, loosened by days of continuous rain, slid down and covered the area that has an estimated population of 3,000 at about 10:30 a.m.
As of Feb. 21, the Philippine National Red Cross placed the number of casualties in the landslide that struck villages in Leyte at 1,122, 400 survivors and 19 injured. It listed 281 houses destroyed and 1,577 evacuees from the villages of Guinsaugon, Ayahag, Nueva Esperanza, Tambis 1 and Tambis 2. Of the 85 bodies recovered, more than half remained unidentified because they were crushed by boulders and mud that measured about 25 feet deep in St, Bernard.
Early hopes that there were children and teacher survivors from a school buried in mud faded after diggers found no signs of life later.
The National Disaster Coordinating Council sent rescue helicopters from the 505th Tactical Air Wing. Soldiers from the Army’s 43rd Infantry Battalion and Air Force personnel based in Mactan, Cebu, were the first to join in the rescue and aid distribution.
Later hundreds of US Marines participating in the Balikatan war games in the Philippines along with their helicopters came to join in the futile search for survivors and to help the evacuees. Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and other countries to help in the recovery effort.
Filipino and foreign rescuers located the site of a school believed to contain some 200 students and 40 teachers in the village of Guinsaugon.
“They have discovered a trace of the school building,” Joseph Chang, co-ordinator for a specialist Taiwan rescue team, told AFP, adding that crews have now pinpointed its location under tonnes of mud and rocks. But Chang said he had no idea when rescuers might be able to dig down to it.
Ted Esguerra, head of a coastguard rescue team, said rescuers Feb. 20 had heard “rhythmic tapping sounds” from the site of the school. It was not clear what the noises might be and there were no immediate reports from other rescuers that sounds had been heard.
Eugene Pilo’s wife and children are gone; so are almost all of his friends and neighbors. In just a matter of seconds, the mountain that loomed over his village took them in a rush of mud and boulders that smashed and covered everything in its path.
“What happened was horrendous,” Pilo told GMA-7 television “So many died. Our village is gone, everything was buried in mud. All the people are gone.”
Pilo was at his brother’s house when they felt the ground shake just before 10 a.m. (0200 GMT). “Then the landslides struck,” he recalled. “I ran out in the street, but I fell to the ground, along with my brother. There were big boulders — bigger than a house — and logs which rushed down.”
Survivor Dario Libatan said he believed his wife and three children were killed. “It sounded like the mountain exploded, and the whole thing crumbled,” Libatan said. “I could not see any house standing anymore.”
The landslide also affected two other nearby villages. Rescue workers, dwarfed by a vast brown landscape that sharply contrasted with the bright green of nearby rice paddies, were seen desperately seeking signs of life beneath mud up to 10 meters (30 feet) deep.
Sometimes they were lucky. They pulled a dazed child from the suffocating mud, then a woman. But as the day ended, only 53 survivors had been reported. “We did not find injured people,” said Ricky Estela, a crewman on a helicopter that flew a politician to the scene. “Most of them are dead and beneath the mud.”
Didita Kamarenta, who lives on a mountain next to one of the villages in Saint Bernard town in Leyte province, said the earth shook and there was a strong gust of wind.