At least 126 dead and missing in massive floods and landslides in the Philippines

TALISAY, Philippines (AP) — The number of people killed and missing in massive floods and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Trami in the Philippines has reached nearly 130 and the president said Saturday that many areas remained isolated with people in need of rescue.

Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines on Friday, killing at least 85 people and leaving 41 others missing in one of the Southeast Asian archipelago’s deadliest and most destructive storms so far this year, the country’s disaster management agency said. government. The death toll was expected to rise as reports came in from previously isolated areas.

Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency workers, supported by three excavators and sniffer dogs, excavated one of the last two missing villagers in the lakeside town of Talisay in Batangas province on Saturday.

A father waiting for word about his missing 14-year-old daughter cried as rescuers placed the remains in a black body bag. Distraught, he followed police officers as they carried the body bag through a mud-strewn village street to a police van when a crying resident came up to him to express her condolences.

The man said he was sure it was his daughter, but authorities had to carry out checks to confirm the identity of the villager dug up in the mound.

At a nearby basketball gym in the city center, more than a dozen white coffins were laid side by side, containing the remains of those found in the piles of mud, boulders and trees that crashed down the steep slope of a forested ridge Thursday afternoon. The Sampaloc village of Talisay.

President Ferdinand Marcos, inspecting another hard-hit region southeast of Manila on Saturday, said the unusually large amount of rainfall dumped by the storm – including some areas that received one to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours – overwhelmed flood control efforts . in provinces ravaged by Trami.

“The water was just 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 are flooded and inaccessible even to large trucks.”

His government, Marcos said, would plan to work on a major flood control project that could deal with the unprecedented threats posed by climate change.

More than 5 million people were in the storm’s path, including nearly half a million who largely fled to more than 6,300 emergency shelters in several provinces, the government agency said.

At an emergency Cabinet meeting, Marcos expressed concern over reports from 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 hit Vietnam this weekend if it did not veer off course.

The Philippine government closed schools and government buildings for a third day on Friday to keep millions of people safe on the northern island of Luzon. Ferry services between the islands were also suspended, leaving thousands stranded.

The weather cleared in many areas on Saturday, allowing cleanup efforts in most areas.

Annually approximately 20 storms and typhoons are storming the Philippines, a Southeast Asian archipelago located between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyanone of the strongest tropical cyclones on record, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and flattened entire villages.