LEGASPI, Dec 3: Rescuers in the Philippines said the death toll from devastating mudslides triggered by typhoon rains could pass 1,000 as President Gloria Arroyo declared a state of national calamity.
As emergency workers and residents continued to dig bodies out of the thick mud, local Red Cross officials said they had confirmed 406 deaths and another 398 missing.
Senator Richard Gordon, the National Red Cross president, said he expected that the death toll could pass 1,000 as hopes faded of finding more survivors of the tragedy overnight on Thursday.
He said: “We have recovered a lot of dead people and the number of missing has grown. I expect the number dead could be well over 1,000. But the real toll may never be known.
“It is important we recover as much as we can ... but at some point we have to declare closure and declare a mass grave over the area,” he said in radio interviews.
Many villages have not yet reported how many residents have died.
In some cases, whole families have been buried by torrents of mud and ash unleashed by super typhoon Durian. The mudflows swept over villages on the slopes of the Mayon volcano.
The Red Cross said it had been asked to try and find Brecon Wieyan, 24, from Australia and John Cochrin, 59, from New Zealand, who were on their way to Sorsogon province, east of Manila, when the typhoon struck.
The last contact with them was on Thursday morning but it was unclear where they were at the time, the Red Cross said.
Arroyo declared a “state of national calamity” and authorised the immediate release of $20 million to rehabilitate areas affected by the tragedy.
She said the government would continue to mobilise its resources to try and find survivors and thanked foreign countries for offers of aid and sympathy.
“All resources of the government will continue to be mobilized without let-up as we pin hope against hope on the search of survivors,” she said in a statement.
“We need to rise up from this trial and help rebuild devastated communities and lives.” Among the rescuers arriving at the scene was a five-member Spanish rescue team with a dog trained to sniff for bodies.
In various parts of the Bicol region, southeast of Manila, communities have resorted to mass burials to deal with the scores of unclaimed bodies that were starting to decompose.
In one case, residents of the riverside town of Rawis used hand tools in a desperate attempt to reach five college students believed trapped in a ruined dormitory.
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. Many are still cut off and out of reach of the rescue teams.
Some 305 evacuation centres have been established to house the thousands displaced, the Red Cross said. But clean water, food and medicine were in short supply.
Power, communications and water remained out of service across most of the region, further hampering relief efforts, as tales of tragedy and loss abounded.
At a hospital in Legaspi, Arthur Atierros tried to comfort his distraught wife Mercy, 35, whose leg was amputated after the wall of their home collapsed on her.
