Landslide Searchers Change Dig Location

GUINSAUGON, Philippines ”€ Rescue workers dug grimly Tuesday for a mud-swamped elementary school, but in a different spot from where they excitedly detected underground sounds a day earlier that they hoped were signs of life.

The buzz that fed a sense of urgency Monday evening was gone. Ground-penetrating radar, capable of mapping structures up to 50 feet deep, found nothing.

Hopes of a miracle had focused on the school amid unconfirmed reports that survivors there sent cell phone text messages to relatives shortly after a mountainside collapsed Friday in a wall of mud and boulders that swamped the farming village of Guinsaugon on Leyte island.

But with the only survivors pulled out hours later, the prospects of finding life under mud believed to be more than 100 feet deep were fading by the hour. The confirmed death toll was 107, and about 1,000 were missing and feared dead, said Dr. Adelaida Asperin, a Department of Health official on Leyte island.

The threat of more rain-triggered landslides slowed the search, as did confusion over where to dig and problems dealing with the wet mud.

After another frustrating day, most rescue workers left the site a couple of hours after dark, with a few teams using specialized gear staying behind to take advantage of the silence to listen for sounds under the mud that could be checked later.

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