Over 90 Dead in Manila Trash Landslide

M A N I L A, Philippines, July 11, 2000 -- Hope of finding more survivors is fading fast in the Philippines, after a mountain of garbage collapsed on top of a nearby shantytown and then burst into flames.

“It’s almost impossible to get anybody alive at this time,after 24 hours,” said Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado, who alsoheads the National Disaster Coordinating Council.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council said about 300 squatter shanties and hundreds of residents near the dumpsite in the Quezon City suburb were feared buried.

More than 90 corpses had so far been retrieved from the dumpsite, called Lupang Pangako, or “the Promised Land” in the local Tagalog language. The council said 59 people had been rescued alive.

More victims are expected, with estimates of those missing ranging from 72 by the Red Cross to 300 by community leader Emerita Pecsonat.

Quezon City mayor Mel Mathay says even the government is fuzzy on the actual numbers of families living in Manila’ s grimy and dangerous zones.

“They are not in the census. These are scavengers living inshanties, they’re a moving population,” he said.

Land of Hell

Some 44 percent of the 10 million population of Manila live in poverty, in garbage dumps, by polluted waterways, under highway and railway bridges and on the sides of rail tracks.

The poorest among these live near or at garbage dumps, defying disease and the stink and scavenging in the garbage to eke out a living.

TheLupang Pangako dump is one of the largest in Manila and takes in about 1,500 tons ofgarbage each day.

”This is the Land of Hell,” said Wilson Carpio, a relative of one of the dead. “In the dry season there are flames all around. In the rainy season there are landslides. But we cannot leave this place because we are poor.”

“The way I see it, there is no more chance, because all those who were recovered were all dead, because they were burnt,” said Gema Esperilla, another victim’s relative. “I have no more hope that they are alive, but even if they are already dead, I just want to see them.”

Digging Through the Trash

Rescuers dug through the wall of rotting garbage into Tuesday,but were hampered by the stench and lack of equipment, includingadequate lighting.

One scavenger, Gloria Alano, sobbed and yelled at rescuers usinga heavy bulldozer on a heap of garbage to search for survivors andbodies.

“Backhoe, use only backhoes, not bulldozers, I want to get thebodies of my loved ones,” she cried. Her husband and threechildren were buried under the tons of garbage.

After collapsing onto the shanties, the wall of garbage burstinto flames, engulfing the area. Residents said the debris may havebeen ignited by fallen power cables or stoves being used in hutscovered by the garbage.

Smoldering Ruins

Portions of the dump, about 50 feet high and about five times the size of a football field, smolder and burn all day as decomposing organic waste, from rotting food to the carcasses of dead animals, ignite trapped methane gas.

Fire trucks could not reach the area because of limited spaceand parked on a main road several blocks from the dump. Hoses werepulled through crowded alleys by firefighters, who extinguishedmost of the blaze after several hours.

Danilo Castro, whose shanty was perched alongside the mountainof garbage, said he felt the ground shift in the morning, before itfinally collapsed.

“I left the house because I needed to sell outside, so I leftmy wife and child,” he said. “When I came back my house was goneand my wife and child are buried underneath.”

The wall of garbage buried an area of squatter houses about thesize of four basketball courts. About 100 houses were covered,Quezon City Mayor Mathay said.

About 780 people were taken to an evacuation center at cityhall, he said.

Horror Beneath the Surface

In one area, rescuers pulled out three bodies, including a manbadly burned but breathing.

Red Cross volunteers doused his body with water from a fire hosebut failed to revive him, witnesses said.

A week of heavy rains followed by a thunderstorm early Mondayapparently caused a crack in the upper portion of the mountain ofgarbage, Manila police chief Edgar Aglipay said.

The dumpsite was to be closed permanently last December but theplan was postponed until later this year after residents at agarbage landfill in San Mateo in nearby Rizal province refused toallow waste from metropolitan Manila to be dumped there.

ABCNEWS’ Gamay Palacios, the Associated Press, and Reuters contributed to this report