Rescue Dogs Join Effort to Find Buried Victims in Turkish Slide

CATAK, Turkey — Rescue workers dug in a 20-foot layer of mud and rocks Friday for about 100 people buried by a landslide, using rescue dogs and dodging boulders that skittered down the mountain.

A truck driver and a resident were injured by the new rockslides that pelted down on what remains of this village in the rain-soaked mountains above the Black Sea port of Trabzon.

“It’s too soon to give up hope of finding people alive, but I think we will soon be discovering bodies,” said Klaus Kolter, a member of the West German Rescue Dog Assn., who is helping in the search for victims of the disaster on Thursday, when initial reports said as many as 300 were feared dead. “We’ll keep on trying.”

Rescue workers abandoned plans for an all-night search because of fears of a new, major landslide. The operation was to resume at dawn today.

Three West German tourists were among those missing in the landslide, which residents of Catak blamed on inadequate buttressing of the walls of the highway that runs through the village.

Members of the West German team took 21 rescue dogs over mounds of earth covering a coffeehouse, a restaurant, 20 homes and a high school that had been closed for summer vacation.

Earthmovers cleared loose debris and a team of 50 civil defense workers dug in spots where the reactions of the dogs indicated survivors might be trapped in air pockets beneath boulders.

More than 30 hours after hundreds of tons of mud and rock roared down on Catak, only one body had been recovered.

Villagers said at least 30 bus passengers were in the coffeehouse when the landslide occurred, having breakfast while bulldozers cleared a rockfall that had blocked the highway the night before. Dozens more waited at the roadside, they said.