At least 56 people died smothered under tonnes of rubbish and scores were missing after a towering garbage dump collapsed yesterday in a district called the Promised Land on the outskirts of the Philippine capital Manila.
More than 90 people were injured as the avalanche buried more than 100 houses, mostly shanties, in a squatter colony at the foot of the dump site in the Manila suburb of Quezon City around 7.30 a.m. (0.30 a.m. Irish time) officials said.
"Help us, our parents are buried below," a sobbing Robee Pablo (8) told rescue workers who found him and his sister, Sheryl (4) near the ruins of their house. The two children were covered with garbage.
Nine hours after the cave-in, moans could be heard from beneath the mountain of rubbish, Manila radio station DZRH said.
Officials said the collapse was caused by heavy rains from typhoon Kai-Tak which had battered the country for five days, loosening the dump's soil foundation.
About 300 soldiers and volunteers, hampered by lack of cutting equipment, poor lighting from generators and bursts of rain, toiled through the night to try to reach victims pinned underneath.
The Red Cross said 72 people were missing and 1,500 were homeless. A soldier said he was told by his officer that "1,000 persons" were buried but this was not confirmed.
Rescuers said they feared the death toll would rise once they reached the bottom of the heap.
Many of the dead were children, some only months old.
"I was sleeping when I thought I heard an airplane coming. Then there was an explosion," Nelda Tagalo (9) said. "My Papa saved me."
Two boys, aged eight and three, appeared in shock when they were rescued. Asked about their mother, the eldest just said: "No more."
Survivors said they heard a rumbling followed by an avalanche of mud and garbage which swamped their wooden houses as one side of the 50 ft high dumpsite gave way.
As it crumbled, a live electric cable lit a pile of garbage, sparking a fire.
The dumpsite - ironically called Lupang Pangako (Promised Land) - is a bleak underworld of 80,000 slum-dwellers, most of whom trek up the small mountain everyday to forage for used plastic containers, bottles, broken toys and broken appliances to sell to junk shops.
Three times the size of a football field, the dump absorbs about a quarter of the 4,500 metric tonnes of solid waste churned out daily by factories and homes in the metropolis of 10 million people.
Mayor Mel Mathay said residents were ordered last week to move out of the area because of the danger of landslides as a result of Kai-Tak's onslaught. "But they refused," he said.
"We don't know how many people are missing because we have no figures on how many were in the houses that were buried," Mr Mathay said. "These are mobile people who live by scavenging. Overnight, shanties would just shoot up here."