April 22, 2011
A landslide buried shanties, tents and illegal mine shafts in an exceedingly southern Philippines village Friday, killing 3 folks and leaving a minimum of twenty one missing.
Soldiers, police and miners used shovels and their vacant hands to dig out eleven survivors from the mud, rock and debris that cascaded onto clusters of shanties and bunkhouses once a downpour as folks slept before dawn in an exceedingly village close to Pantukan city in Compostela Valley province.
Officials deployed bulldozers and backhoes, however tiny landslides delayed their arrival. 3 air force helicopters helped ferry the injured to safety and move rescue equipment and security forces into the communist rebel-infested space, Pantukan Mayor Celso Sarenas said.
The dead included a 16-year-old miner dug out from the mud and 2 men pinned by huge picket poles that collapsed at a shaft entrance where they'd tried to hunt cowl from the a lot of mud and debris roaring down the mountain, Sarenas said.
Many people initially listed as missing turned out to be alive once authorities checked with the survivors and fellow miners. The twenty one missing as of evening were largely illegal gold miners and their families who designed bunkhouses and shanties close to where they eke out a living by digging in slender, dangerous shafts, Sarenas said.
It is tough to understand if additional folks are missing as a result of transients briefly camp there whereas sorting out gold, he said.
Dozens of troopers, police and militiamen have arrived by foot and helicopter to assist within the search and rescue, that was being hampered by the muddy terrain, a drizzle and also the gathering darkness late Friday, Army Col. Roberto Domines said.
Sarenas said the miners have long been warned to remain far from the disaster-prone space.
"We have warned them repeatedly of the danger there, however they would not listen," Sarenas told The Associated Press by phonephone from Pantukan, regarding 580 miles (930 kilometers) southeast of Manila.
A landslide within the same village, Kingking, and a close-by community in 2009 killed twenty one folks, as well as kids, officers said.
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