Emergency workers pulled out 10 bodies and rescued six people yesterday as they scrambled to free dozens trapped in a government building inundated by a wall of mud and rocks when a typhoon swept across the Philippines on Tuesday.
At least 15 more who sought shelter inside the building in Natonin, a town in Mountain province, 450km north of Manila, were still listed as missing.
Mr Ruben Carandang, regional director of the Office of Civil Defence, said there were 31 people, including a project engineer, contractors, security guards and evacuees, inside the building, which housed an office of the public works department.
The landslide occurred at around 4pm on Tuesday, he said.
"In the pictures sent to me this morning, the building was not flattened. There were doors open. There are open spaces," Mr Carandang said. "There is a possibility there are people still alive. They will not die if they were not crushed."
But Natonin Mayor Mateo Chiyawan said the chances that there were any more survivors were slim.
"Time is of the essence. The problem is not the personnel, but access," said Mr Edgar Posadas, spokesman for the Office of Civil Defence.
He said that apart from the 10 confirmed deaths in Natonin, nine others were killed in the northern part of the main island of Luzon. All but one died in landslides.
He said three people died in Mountain province, one in Kalinga province and another in Isabela province.
A father with his three children, an 11-year-old girl and two boys aged 10 and eight, were killed in a landslide in Batad, a remote village of about 1,500 people in Ifugao province, some 430km north of Manila.
Typhoon Yutu, which caused devastation in some Western Pacific islands, swept across the Philippines on Tuesday, toppling electric posts, tearing roofs off homes, bending trees and pouring sheets of rain that triggered mudslides across the northern half of the main island of Luzon.
Yutu made landfall early in the morning in Dinapigue town, Isabela province, 268km north of Manila, with winds of 140kmh and gusts of up to 230kmh. The typhoon had greatly weakened since.
As a Category 5 storm packing 270kmh winds, it made a direct hit on Saipan and Tinian, two islands of the Northern Marianas, an American territory about 9,000km west of the US mainland.
It then moved across Luzon, bringing ferocious winds and heavy rains.
Three dams in Luzon began releasing water to prevent flooding, and some 17,000 people were taken to evacuation centres.
Hurricane-force winds, meanwhile, buffeted Manila all through the day.
Hundreds of ferries and boats were moored at a key port in Batangas province, south of Manila, stranding over 1,000 passengers.
In places like Masinloc town in Zambales province, however, tens of thousands still made their way to cemeteries to clean graveyards as they made preparations for a two-day holiday to remember the dead.
Yutu, locally named Rosita, is the 18th typhoon to hit the Philippines this year.
It comes just six weeks after super typhoon Mangkhut tore through northern Luzon, triggering rivers of mud that inundated mountain homes and killed over 100 people.
