Mudslide vigil

Philippines | U.S. Marines joined international rescuers in a race against time | Lynn Vincent

The avalanche that thundered down on the Philippine hamlet of Guinsaugon "sounded like a thousand buffalo charging at you," eyewitnesses told Marine Corps Captain Burrell Parmer. "In two or three minutes the whole village was buried" under a blanket of mud, rocks, and boulders the size of cars.

On Feb. 17 the landslide buried as many as 1,100 villagers, including a school of 240 children and six teachers that was in session when the side of a jungle mountain collapsed in a torrent 100 acres broad and 90 feet deep.

Now, what once was a bargangay, or satellite village, outside the town of St. Bernard on south Leyte Island is a bristling search-and-rescue zone. U.S. marines from the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Unit, sailors from the USS Essex and USS Harpers Ferry, and airmen from Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines and Anderson Air Force Base in Guam are working alongside Philippine armed forces, the Red Cross, and rescue workers from Malaysia and other Pacific islands.