At least 115 dead, missing in massive flooding and landslides in Philippines
The number of dead and missing in massive flooding and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Trami in the Philippines has exceeded 100 , while many areas remain isolated with people in need of rescue.
Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines on Friday, leaving at least 81 people dead and 34 others missing in 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 come in from previously isolated areas.
Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency personnel, backed by three backhoes and sniffer dogs, dug up one of the last two missing villagers in the lakeside town of Talisay in Batangas province Saturday.
In a nearby basketball gym at the town center, more than a dozen white coffins were laid side by side, bearing the remains of those found in the heaps of mud, boulders and trees that cascaded Thursday afternoon down the steep slope of a wooded ridge in Talisay’s Sampaloc village.
President Ferdinand Marcos, who inspected another hard-hit region southeast of Manila Saturday, said the unusually large volume of rainfall dumped by the storm — including in some areas that saw one to two months’ worth of rainfall in just 24 hours — overwhelmed flood controls in provinces lashed by Trami.
His administration, Marcos said, would plan to start work on a major flood control project that can meet 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.
