Cries Echo Amid Quake’s Carnage : Philippines: Hundreds are feared dead in collapsed buildings and mines in Baguio. Rescue efforts are slow.

BAGUIO, Philippines —  The cold rain mixed with her hot tears as Milinda Reyes stood with a bullhorn and cried again and again Tuesday for her 5-year-old daughter.

“Michelle, can you hear me?” the 30-year-old woman sobbed. “Michelle, please get a rock and tap it against the wall so we can find you. Michelle, please. . . .”

There was no sound from the giant heap of crumpled concrete and twisted steel that was the 12-story Hyatt Terraces Hotel and Convention Center until it collapsed in a devastating earthquake here Monday.

Baguio, a graceful town of winding roads and hillside villas, suffered the worst damage from the magnitude 7.7 quake that rolled across central Luzon Island.

Army Gen. Juanito Aquias estimated that 40% of Baguio was damaged. At least 21 hotels, churches, schools, banks and office buildings collapsed, and hundreds of others were damaged. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of residents are feared dead in the rubble and in nearby gold mines.

Officials put the confirmed death toll nationwide at 279.

Thousands of people in Baguio spent their second night Tuesday sleeping in open fields, in cars and buses or in tents across the town. Even the injured slept outdoors, despite the drenching rain, for fear that the city’s three hospital buildings would collapse in one of the almost hourly aftershocks rocking the city.

Dr. Ernesto Bayuga, head of the Notre Dame de Lourdes Hospital, said he could not estimate the number of casualties.

“We haven’t counted them yet,” he said, standing in the pouring rain surrounded by dozens of beds. “They keep coming.”

Many of the refugees cried and prayed as the huge, empty Baguio Hillside Hotel crashed down with a roar following a particularly sharp aftershock at 3 a.m. today.

Another aftershock, measured at a magnitude 6.3 by an observatory in Hong Kong, hit the city at 5 a.m.

“We’ve got no water, no light, no phones and no way out,” said Nora Servania, an insurance agent who spent her second night sleeping outdoors.

Landslides blocked all roads to the city, and heavy thunderstorms Tuesday prevented most helicopters from flying in. Like many roads and buildings, the airport runway is badly cracked. As a result, rescue operations had barely begun by early today, 36 hours after the quake.

Military cadets searched for survivors in the Nevada Hotel, and rescuers were able to talk to 18 people trapped in a room inside. But officials said they fear more than 100 others died when the five-story luxury hotel twisted on its axis, split in two and collapsed.

An official of the U.S. Agency for International Development was pulled dead from the wreckage, a U.S. Embassy official said here. The victim’s identity was not released.

An explosion and fire sent a thick plume of black smoke skyward Tuesday afternoon from the Baguio Export Processing Zone, where a two-story building housing four factories had collapsed. About 650 people were working when the quake hit, and the number of survivors was unknown.

“So many people are inside,” said Rodolfo F. Alborte, whose freight-forwarding company was also affected. “So many people are dead.”

U.S. helicopters had airlifted 31 people out to hospitals by mid-afternoon, and embassy and military officials began inspecting the damage. At the U.S.-run Camp John Hay, the U.S. Embassy and Voice of America buildings were badly damaged. One embassy official predicted that the final death toll here would be enormous.

“Normally, there’s 3,000 people working in the mines here,” he said. “We have no idea what happened to them.”

College buildings on at least three campuses collapsed. At the 10-story University of Baguio commerce building, students jumped screaming from windows as the structure began to shake and floors collapsed. Police said 60 students may be crushed inside.

“This morning, I counted 22 dead,” said Mark Oliver, 17, a student. “The bodies were lined up for their families to claim them.”

Another student, Von Agbayani, 20, was on the seventh floor when it plunged as the fifth and sixth sandwiched beneath him. He finally escaped down the fire escape.

“Everyone was crying and screaming,” he said later. “I could see many people were killed.”

No rescue work was visible at the nine-story Baguio Park Hotel. The building folded like an accordion, showering huge chunks of concrete on cars and trucks below. At least three other hotels in the downtown area also collapsed.

When the bottom two stories of the Royal Inn collapsed, however, windows on the top two floors amazingly were left unbroken. A wall fell away from another building, leaving bedrooms and bathrooms exposed as in a dollhouse.

The most pathetic and heroic tales were at the Hyatt Terraces Hotel, however. A 12-story wing used mainly for offices and apartments collapsed quickly, and a seven-story adjoining section of hotel rooms fell in an aftershock about 45 minutes later, survivors said.

Assistant manager Helen Rotor said at least 57 guests and 23 employees are missing. Another 150 are believed trapped in the casino, she said. Only nine bodies had been recovered by Tuesday afternoon. Among them was the wife of the hotel manager, Heinrich Mauldecker, who stood by the wreckage, grimly supervising the rescue operation.

David Semmerson, 35, a vacationing New Zealander, was in a Shakey’s Pizza when the quake hit.

“A building fell down next to me,” he said. “I ran past the university, and that was in pieces. I thought my family was dead.”

When he reached the Hyatt, he said, “people were tying sheets together. My wife and two kids were on the top floor. I couldn’t do anything.”

Rescuers climbed up the knotted sheets and blankets, tied his 3-month-old and 3-year-old boys to their backs and ferried them down. His wife followed.

“Thirty minutes later, there was a big aftershock,” Semmerson said quietly. “And the whole thing came tumbling down.”

Jan Westrich, her husband, Greg, and their 1 1/2-year-old and 5-year-old sons, a Chicago family visiting from Hong Kong, escaped from a sixth-floor room after the quake hit.

“We ended up going out through the window,” Jan Westrich said. “We climbed across two balconies. Then they had the rope. Two Filipino men tied the children with sheets to their backs and carried them down.”

An aftershock rocked the ground as she spoke, huddled with her sons under a grass-thatched hut on the hotel grounds. The cold rain poured down.

“How come it’s all moving again?” asked Brian, 5.

“Honey, it’s just an aftershock,” she said soothingly.

Most of the guests watched in grim silence as Milinda Reyes called for her daughter in the wreckage nearby.

“People have been hearing her cry,” the distraught mother explained. “At 1 o’clock I called her and she answered. Maybe she’s just tired. Maybe she’s just sleeping.”

With that, Reyes picked up the bullhorn and again began her plaintive cry toward the rubble. “Michelle, can you hear me? Michelle? Please?”

WHERE TO SEND CONTRIBUTIONS

Here are some of the relief organizations collecting aid for the victims of the earthquake in the Philippines: American Jewish Distribution Committee, 711 3rd Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017; Telephone: (212) 687-6200 Catholic Relief Services, P.O. Box 17220, Baltimore, Md. 21297-0304; (301) 625-2220 Church World Service, Philippines Earthquake Response, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, Ind. 46515 Operation USA, 7615 1/2 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046; (213) 658-8876 CARE, 8354 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90048 Save the Children/Philippines Relief Effort, P.O. Box 965, Westport, Conn. 06881 Los Angeles Filipino Assn. of City Employees, c/o Mayor’s Office, 200 N. Spring St., Room 305, Los Angeles, CA 90012