Guinsaugon, Philippines ? Rescue workers held little hope today of finding more survivors from a devastating landslide that killed an estimated 1,800 people, saying this farming village in the eastern Philippines was swallowed whole by a wall of mud and boulders.

The search was focusing on an elementary school amid unconfirmed reports that relatives of the 250 children and teachers had received mobile phone text messages from survivors. Only one girl and a woman had been rescued alive nearby.

Eleven other villages on Leyte island were evacuated today out of fear of further landslides. All are in the same area as Guinsaugon, which has been swamped with 27 inches of rain over the last two weeks.

The U.S. military dispatched two U.S. warships, the USS Harpers Ferry and the USS Essex, and 1,000 Marines to the area.

Many blamed persistent rains and illegal logging for Friday’s disaster.

The logging “stopped around 10 years ago,” Roger Mercado, a member of Congress who represents the area, told Manila radio station DZBB. “But this is the effect of the logging in the past.”

Soldiers were being shuttled to the disaster zone in the shovels of bulldozers that carried them across a shallow stream. With the mud estimated at 30 feet deep at some points, they were given sketches of the village so they could determine approximately where the houses once stood.

Lt. Col. Raul Farnacio, the highest-ranking military officer at the scene, estimated the death toll at 1,800 – nearly every man, woman and child who lived in Guinsaugon, about 400 miles east of the capital, Manila.

“We presume that more or less that 1,800 are feared dead,” a grim Farnacio said as search efforts resumed today in a drenching rain and high winds.

This image taken from television shows rescue workers clean the face of a mud-covered landslide survivor at the disaster site on Leyte island in the eastern Philippines Friday, Feb. 17, 2006. A rain-soaked mountainside disintegrated in an unstoppable wall of mud Friday, burying hundreds of houses and an elementary school in the eastern Philippines. Red Cross officials estimated 200 people were dead and 1,500 others missing.

Only 57 survivors have been found – none so far today – out of a population of 1,857. At least 24 bodies have been pulled from the mud, and a child who was rescued died overnight from head injuries.

Farnacio said the troops were digging only where they saw clear evidence of bodies because of the danger that the soft, unstable mud could shift and claim new victims.

“We can only focus on the surface,” he said. “We cannot go too deep.”

Low clouds hung over the area, obscuring the mountain that disintegrated Friday morning after two weeks of heavy rains, covering the village’s 375 homes and elementary school.