Swallowed By the Earth

The people of Guinsaugon thought they were safe. After two weeks of heavy storms dumped more than 50 cm of rain on the southern end of the Philippine island of Leyte, causing minor landslides in a nearby town, the sun had finally come out. Many villagers who had temporarily evacuated the area for fear of further slides returned home. But last Friday, at around 10 a.m., the rain-saturated mountain above Guinsaugon suddenly collapsed, engulfing the small farming village and its inhabitants in a thick river of mud, boulders and torn trees.

Every building in Guinsaugon—including an elementary school filled with over 200 students, teachers and mothers—was buried by the landslide. Rescuers on the scene managed to pull out more than 50 survivors, but by the end of the following day, hope had all but vanished for the 1,800 still trapped beneath 6 m of mud. "The earth swallowed them up," says Roger Mercado, a legislator from southern Leyte. "It was as though the village had disappeared from the map."

Some officials were quick to blame the disaster on illegal logging, although a report last year by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the Center for International Forestry Research found little connection between deforestation and major floods. The massive death toll was just as likely an inescapable result of the record-breaking rainfall and population growth in vulnerable areas such as southern Leyte. The island, which sits on a geological fault, is prone to earthquakes and other natural catastrophes: in 1991, 6,000 people were killed in a flood and landslide triggered by one of the island's frequent tropical storms. With such disasters on the rise, rapid relief will become even more important in the future, but it's too late for Guinsaugon. "Help is on the way," President Gloria Arroyo told the nation, including large military detachments from the Philippines and the U.S.—and a relief plane bound for Leyte with 1,000 body bags. They'll need more.