Philippines authorities retrieve bodies from landslide following super typhoon Mangkhut
Philippines landslide
Authorities were struggling to reach fifty-five people trapped and feared dead in the village of Ucab in Itogon Town. Only three people have been rescued alive from the debris. Rescuers were mostly armed with hand tools and used bare hands to remove roofing, slabs of concrete and planks of wood in the recovery operation.
Hopes of finding survivors in the rubble of a huge landslide in the Philippines faded as rescuers in a remote mountainous region recovered 12 bodies on Monday (September 17), two days after a powerful typhoon struck.
Authorities were struggling to reach fifty-five people trapped and feared dead in the village of Ucab in Itogon Town. Only three people have been rescued alive from the debris. Rescuers were mostly armed with hand tools and used bare hands to remove roofing, slabs of concrete and planks of wood in the recovery operation.
Many of the missing or dead were in an abandoned bunkhouse, next to a chapel which had all been crushed by the moving earth. The abandoned bunkhouse was near the site of a mine which was operating illegally, according to the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines.
Ucab village was hit by one of 50 landslides triggered by heavy rains brought by typhoon Mangkhut, which tore across the northern tip of the Philippines early on Saturday (September 15) and killed over 54 people.