ATAMI, Japan (AFP) – Rescuers were holding out hope of finding at least 64 people buried under the mud and wreckage of a Japanese holiday town that was hit by a devastating landslide, with teams set to resume the desperate search for survivors today.

Soldiers and emergency workers used hand-held poles and mechanical diggers to sift through the muddy debris two days after a torrent of earth slammed down a mountainside and through part of the hot-spring resort of Atami in central Japan.

Rescue operations were suspended in the evening and will resume early today, city officials said.

Four people have been confirmed dead, although officials are struggling to pinpoint the whereabouts of dozens as they scour the wreckage of 130 homes and other buildings that were destroyed.

Pylons were toppled, vehicles buried and buildings tipped from their foundations in the disaster, with aerial footage from the mountaintop showing a stark brown wedge gouged out of the green hillside.

“As of today, at least 64 people are still unaccounted for,” the city’s disaster management spokesman Yuta Hara told AFP after the city released their names in a bid to gather information about their status.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said the focus was still on finding survivors, with hundreds of rescue workers “doing their best to rescue as many people as possible, as soon as possible”.

The Saturday landslide descended in several violent waves during Japan’s annual rainy season, following days of intense downpours in and around Atami.

Survivors at a nearby evacuation centre told AFP on Sunday of their panic when the landslide began.

“When I opened the door, everyone was rushing into the street and a policeman came up to me and said: ‘What are you doing here? You have to hurry, everyone is evacuating,’ “ said one resident.

“So I went out in the rain in a hurry, without changing, with just a bag,” added the resident.

Authorities were examining whether some 54,000 cubic metres of soil left on the mountain by a real estate company in 2007 had contributed to the disaster, according to Kyodo.

Rescuers yesterday took advantage of a break in the rain to continue their search, wading through streams of murky water and moving blocks of timber and other debris out of the way.

Non-compulsory evacuation orders have been issued to more than 35,700 people across Japan, mostly in the Shizuoka region.