At least 126 dead and missing in massive flooding and landslides in Philippines
At least 85 people are dead and 41 others are missing amid flooding and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Trami in the Philippines; many areas remain isolated with people needing to be rescued.
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Nearly 130 people have been killed and reported missing in the Philippines as a result of the severe flooding and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Trami. The president stated on Saturday that many places were still isolated and that people needed to be rescued.
Trami, one of the deadliest and most damaging storms to hit the Southeast Asian archipelago this year, roared away from the northwest Philippines on Friday, leaving at least 85 people dead and 41 missing, according to the government's disaster response agency. Reports from previously remote places were expected to increase the death toll.
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.
A father, who was waiting for word on his missing 14-year-old daughter, wept as rescuers placed the remains in a black body bag. Distraught, he followed police officers, who carried the body bag down a mud-strewn village alley to a police van when one weeping resident approached him to express her sympathies.
The man said he was sure it was his daughter, but authorities needed to do checks to confirm the identity of the villager dug up in the mound.
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.
"The water was just too much," Marcos told reporters.
"We’re not done yet with our rescue work," he said. "Our problem here, there are still many areas that remained flooded and could not be accessed even big trucks."
His administration, Marcos said, would plan to start work on a major flood control project that could meet the unprecedented threats posed by climate change.
More than 5 million people were in the path of the storm, including nearly half a million who mostly fled to more than 6,300 emergency shelters in several provinces, the government agency said.
In an emergency Cabinet meeting, Marcos raised concerns over reports by government forecasters that the storm — the 11th to hit the Philippines this year — could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea.
The storm was forecast to batter Vietnam over the weekend if it did not veer off course.
To ensure the safety of millions of people on the major northern island of Luzon, the Philippine government closed its government offices and schools for the third day on Friday. Thousands of people were left stranded as interisland ferry services were also canceled.
On Saturday, the weather cleared in most places, making cleanup efforts possible.
The Philippines, an archipelago in Southeast Asia that is situated between the Pacific and South China Seas, is hit by roughly 20 storms and typhoons year. One of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded, Typhoon Haiyan, destroyed entire villages and killed or left over 7,300 people missing in 2013.
