GUINSAUGON, Philippines - With only 139 bodies recovered and nearly a thousand villagers missing, officials in the Philippines Friday declared an end to the search for survivors of the landslide that engulfed this farming village a week ago.
Emergency crews will now focus their efforts on helping evacuees who lost their homes in the disaster.
"We have decided to move on to recovery and rehabilitation of survivors because our greater responsibility ... is to rebuild the lives of those who have been devastated by this disaster," Rosette Lerias, governor of Southern Leyte province, said Friday.
Hundreds of U.S. Marines and other rescue workers have been digging Guinsaugon out from under the mud for the past week but not a single person has been found alive since the first hours after the Feb. 17 disaster.
Rescuers have retrieved 139 bodies, including three more in Friday. Another 973 people are believed buried beneath tons of earth that swept over the village when a mountain collapsed, Lerias said
Search teams plan to continue looking for bodies for a week or two before the area is converted into a memorial. Officials plan to shore up the earth so it settles as giant mound of earth with the remaining bodies inside.
Lerias said the decision to call off the search for survivors came after heavy rain on Friday forced rescue teams to halt their work for risk of further landslides.
Wet conditions have hampered search teams, which include Philippine soldiers, U.S. Marines, and Malaysian and Taiwanese workers, since the early hours of the disaster in the southeastern Philippines.
The decision to abandon the search was accepted by villagers staying at temporary shelters, the governor said. She added that donations for the 3,314 evacuees left homeless by the disaster were beginning to pour in.
