As midnight approached and high tides rose around her, mother-of-three Chonalyn Sapi sought refuge at her local village chapel in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao del Norte, only to find it was already filled with her neighbors.

Desperate to find shelter from Tropical Storm Nalgae, she and others ran uphill in the dark as boulders, mud and debris rolled down the mountain in a massive landslide that would later bury the nearby hamlet of Kusiong, their home.

“We didn’t sleep that night after it started raining,” Sapi, one of the few survivors of the Flood, told AFP.

“By midnight it was already mud, no water. Some ran to school, others chose church. Some were already asleep.”

Sapi said those who reached the local high school building survived, but those inside the church — including two of her elderly relatives — were buried under the mud.

“We didn’t even have a flashlight. It was really dark. We heard the rumble of boulders rolling down the mountain. You couldn’t mistake it for anything else,” she said.

Miraculously, she, her husband, and their two younger children were unharmed.

Soaked through and shivering from the cold, they waited three hours on the hillside for the deluge to come.

Just before dawn, the rain stopped and the family cautiously made their way back to the ruined village, wading through torrents of water.

Viewed through drone footage, the effects of the landslide were breathtaking. A massive pile of rubble, the size of about 10 football pitches, was created just below several scenic mountain peaks covered in yellow-green grass.

Rescuers in local fire department orange vests and armed with shovels poked under the galvanized sheet metal of houses half buried in rock and mud, looking for bodies.

About 60 homes were buried while some others made of lighter materials were swept toward the street below, said Lt. Col. Dennis Almorato, spokesman for an Army division tasked with assisting the rescue effort.

“This area is at the foot of the mountain. The heavy rain could have softened the slopes,” Almorato told AFP.

So far, 14 bodies have been recovered in the village. They are among 40 confirmed deaths in a series of flash floods and landslides that swept through the southern Philippines ahead of Nalgae’s landfall on Saturday.

The mayor of the nearby municipality of Datu Odin Sinsuat, Lester Sinsuat, told AFP news agency that up to 100 people may have been buried in the rubble.

Mercedes Mocadef stood guard by the body of her niece, one of three bodies recovered by rescuers on Saturday.

“Had she died of an illness, it would have been less painful,” Mocadef said, adding the dead young woman’s mother — her cousin — also died, her body being preserved at a local morgue.

The women all belong to the Teduray, one of the many small indigenous tribes of the Philippines who lead a hard life on the fringes of society.

Sapi said they used to live along the coast, amid a string of beach resorts about half a kilometer below. However, the owner of this property moved them to Kusiong two years ago.

The newcomers bare trees on the lower slopes of the mountain to plant coconut palms and corn.

Many coconut tree trunks slid down the mountain during the landslide and collapsed into their homes.

“If people offered us a new home, we would probably turn them down,” Sapi said.

“We’ll just live in the mountain.”