Talisay: The number of dead and missing in massive flooding and landslides triggered by Tropical Storm Trami in the Philippines surpassed 100 and the president said on Saturday that many areas remained isolated with people needing rescue.
Trami moved away from the northwestern Philippines on Friday, leaving at least 81 people dead and 34 others missing in one of the Southeast Asian archipelago’s deadliest and most destructive storms so far this year, the government’s disaster response agency said. The death toll was expected to rise as reports came in from previously isolated areas.
Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency personnel, backed by three backhoes and sniffer dogs, on Saturday unearthed one of the last two missing villagers in the lake town of Talisay in Batangas province.
A father, waiting for news about his missing 14-year-old daughter, cried as rescuers placed the remains into a black body bag. Distraught, he followed police officers carrying the body bag down a muddy alley to a police van when a crying resident approached him to express her condolences.
The man said he was sure it was his daughter, but authorities needed to carry out checks to confirm the identity of the villager unearthed in the mound.
At a nearby basketball gym in the center of the city, more than a dozen white coffins were placed side by side, with the remains of those found among the piles of mud, rocks and trees that cascaded down Thursday. the afternoon up the steep slope of a forested hill in Talisay’s Sampaloc Village.
President Ferdinand Marcos, who surveyed another hard-hit region southeast of Manila on Saturday, said the unusually large volume of rain dumped by the storm, even in some areas that recorded one or two months of rain in just 24 hours, exceeded flood controls. in the provinces hit by Trami.
“The water was too much,” Marcos told reporters.
“We are not done with our rescue work yet,” he said. “Our problem here is that there are still many areas that remain flooded and cannot be accessed even by large trucks.” His administration, Marcos said, plans to begin work on a major flood control project that can address the unprecedented threats posed by climate change. .
More than 4.2 million people were in the path of the storm, including nearly half a million, who mostly fled to more than 6,400 emergency shelters in several provinces, the government agency said.
At an emergency Cainet meeting, Marcos expressed concern over reports from government meteorologists that the storm, the 11th to hit the Philippines this year, could make a 180-degree turn next week as it is pushed back by strong winds. high pressure in the South China Sea. .
The storm was forecast to hit Vietnam over the weekend if it did not move off course.
The Philippine government closed schools and government offices for a third day on Friday to keep millions of people safe on the main northern island of Luzon. Inter-island ferry services were also suspended, leaving thousands of people stranded.
The weather improved in many areas on Saturday, allowing for cleanup work in most areas.
Every year, about 20 storms and typhoons hit the Philippines, a Southeast Asian archipelago that lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones on record, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and devastated entire towns.
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