MANILA, Sept 21, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The death toll from a monsoon landslide
in the central Philippines has risen to 22, officials said Friday, as
rescuers dug through the night in a frantic search for survivors of the
latest tragedy in the storm-hit nation.
Dozens were still missing after part of a massive hillside collapsed
Thursday on several rural communities near Naga on the tourist island of
Cebu.
The rescue effort came as the nation was still reeling from Typhoon
Mangkhut, which killed 88, mostly in a massive landslide in the country’s
mountainous north.
Rescuers on Cebu pulled 22 bodies from the rubble within 24 hours of the
latest disaster, provincial disaster office spokesman Julius Regner told AFP.
Around 200 police, firemen, and specialists using heavy equipment were
still looking for about 50 people, Regner said.
“We hope to recover everyone today so as not to prolong the agony of the
relatives,” he added.
Cebu was not directly hit by Mangkhut, the world’s strongest typhoon this
year, but has been pounded by heavy monsoon rain for days, making the slopes
dangerously loose.
Police forced about 20 people to vacate nearby homes and move to evacuation
centres overnight Thursday out of concern there could be more landslides,
Regner said.
The efforts came as searchers in the Philippines’ north continued to work
to recover the corpses of a suspected dozens of people buried in a landslide
unleashed Saturday by Typhoon Mangkhut.
After days of hundreds of rescuers digging with shovels and even their bare
hands in the mining community of Itogon, heavy equipment has finally arrived
to help accelerate the search.
Small-scale miners and their families were buried after their bunkhouse and
other homes were hit by one of the dozens of landslides unleashed as the
storm hit the Cordillera mountain range.
Most of the 88 people killed by Mangkhut died in landslides in the
mountainous gold-mining Cordillera region that includes Itogon.
Mangkhut also dumped torrential rains on the key agricultural areas of the
Philippines’ main northern island of Luzon, causing crop losses that would
likely total more than $250 million.