PHILIPPINES: Homeowners in the northern Philippines used shovels and rakes to clear debris left by Tropical Storm Trami on Friday as rescuers searched for the missing in thick mud as the death toll rose to 76.
Tens of thousands of people were displaced by flooding caused by a torrential downpour that dumped two months of rain in just two days in some areas.
“Many are still trapped on the roofs of their houses and calling for help,” said Andre Dizon, police director of the hard-hit Bicol region. AFP.
“We hope the flooding will subside today as the rain has stopped,” he added.
But accessibility remained a major problem for rescuers on Friday, particularly in Bicol, President Ferdinand Marcos said.
“That's the problem we have with Bicol, so difficult to penetrate,” he said, adding that the highly saturated terrain caused “landslides in areas that didn't suffer them before.”
Two months of rain
Government offices and schools on the main island of Luzon remained closed on Friday, but storm surge warnings were lifted along the west coast as Trami moved further out to sea.
Jofren Habaluyas, a specialist at the state meteorological agency, said AFP that the province of Batangas had suffered “two months of rain”, or 391.3 mm, during October 24 and 25.
An official count Thursday night reported that nearly 320,000 people were evacuated as flooding turned streets into rivers and half-buried some cities in sludge-like volcanic sediment released by the storm.
Rescuers in Naga City and Nabua Township used boats to reach residents stranded on rooftops, many of whom sought help through Facebook posts.
Meanwhile, the search for a missing fisherman whose boat sank in the waters off Bulacan province, west of Manila, remained suspended on Friday due to strong currents, the local disaster office said.
Every year, about 20 major storms and typhoons hit the Philippines or its surrounding waters, damaging homes and infrastructure and killing dozens of people.
A recent study showed that storms in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly forming closer to coasts, intensifying more quickly and lasting longer on land due to climate change.
