More than 100 people have died or are missing due to Tropical Storm Trami, which caused massive flooding and landslides in the Philippines, and many areas remain isolated, the president said.
Trami blew off the northwestern Philippines on Friday, causing one of the deadliest and most destructive storms in the Southeast Asian archipelago so far this year, leaving at least 81 people dead and 34 missing, the government’s disaster response agency said. announced. The death toll was expected to rise further as reports came in from previously isolated areas.
Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency personnel, assisted by three Yumbo vehicles and search dogs, searched for the last two missing villagers in the lakeside town of Talisay in Batangas province on Saturday. One of them was discovered.
Landslide destroys homes after tropical storm hits Philippines – video
Philippine President Bongbong Marcos, who toured hard-hit areas southeast of Manila on Saturday, said the storm had brought an unusually large amount of rain, with some areas receiving one to two months’ worth of rain in 24 hours. He said it was raining. , the state’s flood control, heavily attacked by Trami, was overwhelmed.
“There was too much water,” Marcos told reporters. “Our rescue efforts are not over yet. The problem here is that many areas are still flooded and cannot be accessed even by large trucks.”
Marcos said his administration plans to embark on major flood control projects that can address the unprecedented threat posed by the climate crisis.
More than 4.2 million people were in the storm’s path, and nearly 500,000 of them were evacuated to more than 6,400 emergency shelters, mostly in multiple states, the agency said.
At an emergency cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Marcos expressed concern over reports from government forecasters that the storm, the 11th this year, to hit the Philippines could be pushed back by high pressure over the South China Sea and make a U-turn next week. .
The storm was expected to hit Vietnam over the weekend unless it was diverted.
The Philippine government on Friday closed schools and government offices for three days to protect the safety of millions of people in northern Luzon. Inter-island ferry services were also suspended, leaving thousands of people stranded.
By Saturday, the weather had improved in many areas, allowing cleanup operations to begin.
Approximately 20 storms and typhoons hit the Philippines every year. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and flattened entire villages.
