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U.S. Marines Join Search for Landslide Survivors

GUINSAUGON, Philippines, Feb. 19 — Dozens of American marines began assisting today in the search for survivors from last week's deadly landslide in the eastern Philippines, digging through the mud in the late afternoon and building roads throughout the evening.

Rescue officials were not too optimistic about finding survivors buried in the mud and debris, but some hope rose among officials and relatives of the missing after the Americans arrived and rescuers said they heard scratching sounds, possibly from the school building, where officials said 246 pupils were believed buried.

"We're still very hopeful," said Rosette Lerias, the governor of Southern Leyte province, during a news briefing this evening.

Rescuers recovered a dozen bodies today, raising the official number of fatalities to 72. Local officials have listed about 900 people as missing, but officials believe about 1,000 to 1,800 villagers were buried in the avalanche.

"All the efforts of our government continue and will not stop while there is hope to find survivors," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said today from Manila. "The nation is grateful for the continued prayers and concern, help from our world allies."

Today, two American military vessels docked at the coastline of Southern Leyte while Chinook helicopters brought rescue equipment and personnel to the disaster zone, which is about three square miles of what used to be this village, now totally covered in dirt.

"We're here to dig," said Col. Alex Vohr, a spokesman for the Marines. He said the Americans will also help rebuild the roads here and to assist local officials in providing potable water and medical care to the hundreds of survivors in evacuation centers in Saint Bernard town.

American troops arrived in the Philippines last week to take part in military exercises with the Filipino military. Although the exercises continued as planned, a number of the American troops have been deployed to help in search and recovery.

This afternoon, a team of Malaysian rescuers led by a Filipino member of the Coast Guard, using equipment that can detect sound at a distance, heard scratching from a buried section where the school had been.

When they moved closer to check, they heard a thud, as if of a stone hitting a roof. Seconds later, the mud near the spot where they heard the thud moved and started caving in.

"The scratching sound then stopped," said a member of the Philippine Coast Guard, Lt. Ted Esguerra, who led the team.

Lieutenant Esguerra interpreted the sound to mean that there had been survivors, possibly in the school building. But, he added, the minor cave-in indicated that the mud, which he described as almost sludge-like because of the rainwater and the river nearby, could have moved into the remaining spaces in the school building that any survivors may have used to keep themselves alive. "The soil is very unstable," he said in an interview.

He said that as a doctor and a rescuer for 13 years, he thought that the chances of finding survivors were very slim.

Rescue efforts have focused on the school building, especially since, according to relatives, some of the victims managed to send phone text messages late Friday.

"We're still in one room, alive," Agence France-Presse quoted a message sent to a daughter of one of the teachers. Another text message read: "We are alive. Dig us out."

Villagers, meanwhile, still struggle to fathom the disaster. "How could this happen?" said Elpidia Golez, a 52-year-old housewife in a nearby village who saw how a portion of the mountain collapsed.

To residents like Mrs. Golez, who had relatives in Guinsaugon, it was hard to imagine why the landslide occurred at the spot along the mountain range where the village had been.

"There are stretches of land along the mountain range that didn't have villages. Why there?" she said, pointing to the gash on the mountain that looked like a giant had stepped on it. "God must have done this on purpose," she added.

Ms. Lerias, the governor, said in an interview today that what happened was "God sent." Only God, she said, "can send down such a massive rainfall." Officials said the extraordinary rainfall, coupled with a mild tremor, set off the avalanche.

Religious leaders in this province, however, told their faithful that God cannot be blamed for the tragedy. "While tragic, this is really not surprising," said the Rev. Francis Vega, the priest of the Saint Bernard parish. "There have been warnings about the dangerous degradation of the environment in this province. Warnings that were not heeded by government officials," he said.

Village officials said they had noticed cracks in the mountain months before but nobody thought it was serious. "We knew that that part of the mountain had become unstable but nobody did anything about it," said Marcos Malubay, an official of Atuyon, a village next to Guinsaugon that was nearly buried by the avalanche.

"No, I don't think you can blame this one on God," said Sister Judith Routier, a British missionary who has lived in Saint Bernard the past six years. "The government has to do something with logging, whether legal or illegal, because if the rains continued, there will be more of this."

Decades of commercial logging have denuded the forests of Southern Leyte province, which has been hit with disasters that residents say have become a part of their lives.

Around the province, several landslides, though small compared to what happened here, have occurred in the past week, many blocking the highway, and some destroying houses and displacing residents. One of the landslides killed eight people.

In December 2004, 154 people were killed in a landslide that hit three towns in the southern part of the province. In 1991, nearly 4,000 people died when floods caused by a typhoon inundated Ormoc City, also within the province.

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