Lingling Aftermath Severe

November 7, 2001 / 3:09 PM EST / AP

Amid rising fear of disease, workers dug mass graves and rescue workers dug up bodies beneath mud, boulders and disintegrated homes Friday on a resort island swamped by tropical storm Lingling.

As the devastated town of Mahinog ran out of embalming fluid to preserve the dead, a backhoe dug a massive hole in the town cemetery and workers buried 15 people in plain plywood coffins. Twenty coffin makers worked around the clock as bodies piled up.

The death toll rose to at least 135 Friday after rescue workers found the bodies of eight of 14 men trapped Thursday when the side of an open pit mine collapsed at a defunct copper mine.

The vast majority of the fatalities have been in Mahinog on the resort island of Camuigin. Workers, often guided by the smell of decomposing bodies, searched the remains of disintegrated houses Friday for some of the nearly 300 missing.

More than 130 were also injured and more than 650 homes were destroyed or damaged on the island of 75,000 inhabitants, said Camiguin Gov. Pedro Romualdo.

Romualdo called for donations of body bags, rice and blankets.

The Mahinog municipal health officer, Dr. Juanita Llacuna, said the dead must be buried immediately to prevent disease because they are decomposing swiftly.

On Thursday, Lingling battered the Philippines for a second day, sinking a cargo ship and virtually shutting down everything in its path with drenching rain as it crawled across the sprawling archipelago.

Nineteen Filipino crewmen on a cargo ship went missing in stormy seas off the northwestern Philippines. There was no word on survivors as the poor weather hampered rescue efforts.

Lingling, a Chinese pet name for a young girl, intensified slightly as it blew farther away from the Philippines, carrying sustained winds of 110 kilometers (68 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 140 kph (87 mph).

It was located about 330 kilometers (205 miles) west northwest of Coron island in the extreme western province of Palawan around 5 p.m. (0900 GMT) and moving west at 13 kph (8 mph) toward Vietnam, weather officials said.

Weather forecaster Leonilo Millanes said the storm is expected to become a typhoon with sustained winds of at least 119 kph (74 mph) within 24 hours as it gains more energy over open waters.

In Mahinog, urgent requests went out for chain saws to cut through trees and other debris, and for anyone with a shovel to help dig through tons of mud.

But the devastation was so complete — only five of 200 houses were still standing in Hubangon, one of the villages that make up Mahinog — that it was hard to tell where most homes had stood.

Fast-moving flood waters bearing boulders cascaded from hills around Hibok-Hibok, one of seven volcanoes on the island, into mountain villages in Mahinog and riverside communities in Catarman as most people were still sleeping Wednesday.

Camiguin, famed for its beach resorts that escaped serious damage, normally misses out on the worst from te typhoon season that batters the Southeast Asian nation every year because most storms track to the north. The storm was the biggest calamity to hit Camiguin since 1951, when Hibok-Hibok volcano erupted, killing 500 people.

Flooding hit other parts of the Philippines. Eight people died in Negros Occidental province, where about 40,000 people were evacuated and officials declared a state of calamity. The storm knocked out electricity and flooded many parts of central Leyte, Samar and Bacolod provinces.