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Sunday December 3, 1:13 PMPhilippines rescuers fear mudslides toll could pass 800
As emergency workers and residents continued to dig bodies from the mud, local Red Cross officials said they had confirmed 406 deaths and another 398 missing. Senator Richard Gordon, the National Red Cross president, said the final toll could even outstrip 1,000 but the true figure would probably never be known. Many villages have not yet reported how many residents have died and in some cases, whole families had been buried by torrents of mud and ash triggered by super typhoon Durian, he said. "Many are saying the death toll could exceed 1,000," Gordon said. "People are telling us entire families and villages have disappeared." Hopes have faded of finding survivors after heavy rains created torrents of mud which engulfed villages on the slopes of the Mayon volcano late on Thursday. In a rare case, residents of the riverside town of Rawis used handtools in a desperate attempt to reach five college students they believed were trapped in a ruined dormitory. Gordon said in one funeral parlor, 40 bodies had gone unclaimed. "If they were unclaimed, it is likely their relatives were buried as well," he said. "At a certain point in time, we will just have to say, we cannot do anymore. We are not going to find any more (bodies)," Gordon added. The Red Cross said as many as 31 villages with some 14,871 residents were hit by the mudflows. In the eastern Bicol region over 500 villages and hamlets were affected by the storm with many of them still cut off and out of reach of the rescue teams. Power, communications and water still remained out of service in most of the region, further hampering rescue and relief efforts, as tales of tragedy and loss abounded. At a hospital here Legaspi, survivor Arthur Atierros, 37 tried to comfort his distraught wife Mercy, 35, whose leg was amputated after the wall of their home collapsed on her. Their nine-year-old daughter, Armira stood nearby, the only one of four children they were able to find after mud swamped their home. Atierros said he and his relatives carried his wife for eight hours on a makeshift stretcher to the hospital. Nearby, Adrian Bagasala was tending to his 29-year-old wife, Ivy, who also had to have her leg amputated when their home collapsed. Bagasala said he dug his seven-month pregnant wife out of the mud but the strain caused her to go into labor, giving birth prematurely. The infant died soon after birth. The disaster comes after some 30,000 people were evacuated from the slopes of Mayon amid signs that the volcano was erupting. However the residents were allowed to return home in September after Mayon simmered down. |
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