MANILA, Philippines (AP):
The farming village is gone, swallowed whole by a wall of mud and boulders that swept down with terrifying speed today from a mountainside in the eastern Philippines. Officials feared the death toll could climb past 1,000.
"There are no signs of life, no rooftops, no nothing," Southern Leyte province Gov. Rosette Lerias said.
The village of Guinsaugon, once a community of 2,500 people, now looks like a 40-hectare (100-acre) patch of newly plowed land.
Its 375 homes and elementary school were buried under mud up to 10 metres (30 feet) deep. Only a few small piles of debris hint at the devastation.
The official death toll stood at 23 after darkness forced suspension of rescue efforts. But the Philippine Red Cross estimated 1,500 people were missing, and the number of survivors plucked from the brown morass stood at just 53 on Leyte island, 670 kilometres (420 miles) sout-heast of Manila.
"Our village is gone, everything was buried in mud," said survivor Eugene Pilo, who lost his family. "All the people are gone."
no house standing
"It sounded like the mountain exploded, and the whole thing crumbled," added fellow survivor Dario Libatan, who lost his wife and three children. "I could not see any house standing anymore."
Rescue workers were hampered by the thick, soft mud that remained unstable, along with flash floods spawned by two weeks of downpours that dumped 27 inches (68 centimetres) of rain on the area.
A second minor landslide added to volunteers' jitters, and a helicopter pilot said the ground near the top of the mountain was still moving in late afternoon.
"You could see a patch of green, then mud where it was," Leo Dimaala said, estimating that half the mountain had already collapsed.
Two other villages also were affected, and about 3,000 evacuees were at a municipal hall.
"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."
Education officials said 250 students and teachers were believed to have been at the school. Only one girl and a woman were rescued alive nearby.
Sen. Richard Gordon, head of the Philippine Red Cross, issued the casualty estimates and appealed for international aid. Governor Lerias asked for people to dig by hand, saying the mud was too soft for heavy equipment.
"I have a glimmer of hope, based on the rule of thumb -- within 24 hours you can still find survivors," Lerias said. "After that, you move on to the recovery phase, but right now it's still rescue mode."
Aerial TV footage showed a wide swath of mud amid stretches of rice paddies at the foothills of the now-scarred mountain, where survivors blamed illegal logging for contributing to the disaster.
A small earthquake also shook the area, but scientists said it occurred after the landslide and likely was unrelated.
Rescue workers dug with shovels for signs of survivors, and put a child on a stretcher, with little more than the girl's eyes showing through a covering of mud.
"Let us all pray for those who perished and were affected by this tragedy," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said.
"Help is on the way," she promised survivors. "You will soon be out of harm's way."
Gordon appealed for U.S. troops -- in the country for joint military exercises -- to send helicopters to the disaster site.
The U.S. Embassy said a U.S. naval vessel was en route to the scene and Philippine disaster officials were being consulted on coordinating chopper deployment.
Army Capt. Edmund Abella said he and about 30 soldiers were wading through waist-deep mud.
"It's very difficult, we're digging by hand, the place is so vast and the mud is so thick," Abella told AP by cell phone. "When we try to walk, we get stuck in the mud."
He said the troops had just rescued a 43-year-old woman.
"She was crying and looking for her three nephews, but they were nowhere to be found," Abella said.
While the official death toll was only 23, Lerias said 375 houses in Guinsaugon were feared buried after two weeks of heavy rains for two weeks blamed on the La Nina weather phenomenon.
"The trees were sliding down upright with the mud," Lerias said.
Rep. Roger Mercado, who represents Southern Leyte, said the mud covered coconut trees and damaged the national highway leading to the village.
Lerias said many residents evacuated the area last week due to the threat of landslides or flooding, but had started returning home during increasingly sunny days, with the rains limited to evening downpours.
In 1944, the waters off Leyte island became the scene of the biggest naval battle in history, when U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur fulfilled his famed vow "I shall return" and routed Japanese forces occupying the Philippines.
In November 1991, about 6,000 people were killed on Leyte in floods and landslides triggered by a tropical storm. Another 133 people died in floods and mudslides there in December 2003.
Last weekend, seven road construction workers died in a landslide after falling into a 46-meter (150-foot) deep ravine in the mountain town of Sogod on Leyte.
