Death Toll in Garbage Collapse at 108

MANILA —  Backhoes dug through mounds of blackened, stinking refuse, and workers pulled corpse after corpse from the filth Tuesday, a day after a wall of garbage collapsed in Manila’s main dump, crushing a group of shacks and killing at least 108 people.

As the search for survivors continued Tuesday evening, relatives of the missing sat weeping and waiting for their loved ones’ bodies to emerge from the acres of trash that buried them. Several black bags with unclaimed bodies lay on an outdoor basketball court. Estimates of the number of people still missing ranged from 72 to 300.

“I have lost hope, but even if they are dead, I still want to see them,” said Gemma Espenilla, whose son, mother and grandfather were buried in the collapse.

Nearby, Wilson Carpio was awaiting word on his wife, two children and seven nieces and nephews, all feared buried under the garbage.

“This is the Land of Hell,” Carpio said.

The impoverished victims lived in an area called the Promised Land--a group of huts and lean-tos near the dump, where garbage was piled as high as seven stories. Squatters, including many children, live in the area and pick through the garbage to collect items they can sell.

A chunk of the mountain of garbage, weakened by a typhoon that swept through the Philippines last week, thundered down onto the shacks Monday, then burst into flame. The collapsed debris apparently was ignited by fallen power cables or stoves in the huts.

Through the night and into Tuesday, rescuers dug through the trash using shovels and two backhoes. But they were hampered by the stench and a lack of equipment, including reliable lighting. Plastic and other non-biodegradable refuse also made it difficult for the hundreds of volunteers and soldiers to dig through the collapsed section.

President Joseph Estrada quickly promised a safer garbage system for Manila, the capital. He promised that bidding will be held next week for a new city waste management system that would no longer simply dump unprocessed garbage.