Hundreds of Philippine rescuers used shovels and their bare hands Tuesday to sift through a massive landslide, with dozens feared dead in the region worst-hit by Typhoon Mangkhut as the storm’s toll climbed to 74.

The typhoon smashed homes and flooded key agricultural regions in the northern Philippines before battering Hong Kong and southern China with fierce winds and heavy rain.

The violent storm killed four in China’s southern province of Guangdong and the toll rose Tuesday to 74 on the Philippines’ northern Luzon island according to police.

Up to 40 people are still feared buried in the landslide in Itogon unleashed Saturday as the typhoon stalled over the area and dumped a month’s worth of rain in a matter of hours.

Because the landslide destroyed roads, authorities have been unable to bring heavy equipment into the area to accelerate the search. As a result the teams were using human chains to extract debris.

The effort has been getting progressively more difficult because the rain-soaked soil has started to harden in the scorching Philippine sun. Crews have been using water to try to soften up the soil.

The area was primed for disaster before Mangkhut hit, as it came on the heels of nearly a month of continuous monsoon rains that left the already hazardous area soggy and dangerously loose.

Almost all the storm’s victims were killed in dozens of landslides unleashed along the Cordillera mountain range, a key gold mining area.

Many of those buried in Itogon were small-scale gold miners and their families who took refuge in a building abandoned by a large mining firm.

Across northern Luzon, which produces much of the nation’s rice and corn, farms were flattened and flooded, with the authorities saying crop losses would likely total more than $250 million.

The Philippines has a poor record of regulating mining, with tunnel collapses and landslides regularly killing people in other gold-rush areas in recent years.

Tearful families surrounded a whiteboard bearing names of the dead and missing as others inspected recovered bodies in an attempt to identify their loved ones.

“Of course his death hurts,” Jocelyn Banawul told the media after her cousin’s corpse was pulled from the debris.

“But he was found, he’s not buried there anymore.”