Nearly 130 people are dead and missing in massive floods and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Trami in the Philippines, and the country’s president said Saturday that many areas remain isolated with people in need of rescue.
The death toll is expected to rise as reports come in from previously isolated areas.
Typhoon Trami hit the northwestern Philippines on Friday, killing at least 85 people and leaving 41 others missing in one of the fiercest and most destructive storms in the Southeast Asian archipelago so far this year, the government disaster agency said.
Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency personnel, backed by three bulldozers and sniffer dogs, exhumed one of the last missing villagers in the lakeside town of Talisay in Batangas province on Saturday.
A father, who was waiting for word about his missing 14-year-old daughter, cried as rescuers placed the remains in a black body bag.
He was followed, distraught, by police officers who carried the body bag through a mud-strewn village alley to the police car when a resident approached him, crying to express her sympathy.
The man said he was sure it was his daughter, but authorities had to conduct checks to confirm the identity of the villager who dug into the hill.
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At a nearby basketball gym downtown, more than a dozen white coffins were laid side by side, bearing the remains of those found in the piles of mud, rocks and trees that fell Thursday afternoon down the steep slope of a wooded ridge in Talisay’s Sampaloc village.
President Ferdinand Marcos, who inspected another hard-hit area southeast of Manila on Saturday, said the unusually large amount of rain that fell due to the storm – including in some areas that saw one to two months of rain in just 24 hours – overpowered the situation. On flood control. In the governorates hit by the tram.
“It was too much water,” Marcos told reporters.
He added: “We have not finished our rescue work yet.” “Our problem here is that there are still many areas that remain submerged in water and cannot be reached even by large trucks.”
Marcos said his administration plans to begin work on a major flood control project that can address the unprecedented threats posed by climate change.
The government agency said more than 5 million people were in the storm’s path, including nearly half a million who fled to more than 6,300 emergency shelters in several provinces.
At an emergency Cabinet meeting, Marcos raised concerns over reports from government forecasters that the storm — the 11th to hit the Philippines this year — could make a full turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea. .
The storm is expected to hit Vietnam over the weekend if it does not deviate from its path.
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. Ferry services between the islands were also suspended, leaving thousands stranded.
The weather cleared in many areas on Saturday, allowing cleaning work in most areas.
Every year, about 20 storms and typhoons hit the Philippines, an archipelago in Southeast Asia located between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.
In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones on record, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and leveled entire villages.
& Edition 2024 The Canadian Press
