By Pam CASTRO | AFP
Manila, Philippines (UPDATED) – Rescuers in the Philippines searched a lake and scoured isolated villages on Sunday to locate dozens of missing people as the death toll from Tropical Storm Trami hit 110.
Trami rammed into the Philippines on October 24, forcing over half a million people to flee their homes, while at least 42 people remain missing in the storm’s aftermath, according to the national disaster agency.
The agency announced Sunday night that at least 110 people were reported dead, though no provincial breakdown was provided for the death toll.
Trami is the deadliest storm to hit the Southeast Asian country so far this year “especially with the reported number of casualties”, Ariel Nepomuceno in the Office of Civil Defence — which oversees disaster management — told AFP.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos vowed Sunday that help was underway for the residents of Camarines Sur province, located in the hardest-hit region of Bicol.
“By air, land, or sea, we’ll keep the support coming. Together, we will rise again,” Marcos said on his social media accounts.
Bicol regional police director Andre Dizon said they have recorded 41 deaths, most due to drowning, with emergency calls still coming in.
“We are still receiving many calls and we are trying to save as many people as we can,” Dizon told AFP Sunday morning.
He added that many residents across Camarines Sur province were still trapped on roofs and the upper floors of their homes.
South of Manila, the death toll in Batangas province rose to 60, provincial police chief Jacinto Malinao told AFP.
Eight deaths were recorded in other provinces, bringing an AFP tally to 109, calculated from official police and disaster agency sources.
But a “higher death toll is possible in the coming days since rescuers can now reach previously isolated places”, Edgar Posadas, the Civil Defence Office’s spokesperson said.
– ‘Swept away’ –
In Taal Lake — Philippines’ third-largest and a tourist destination in Batangas province — police, coast guards and a Marines diving team were searching for a family of seven on Sunday.
“The waters from the mountains hit their home in Balete town, causing it to be swept away with them possibly inside,” Malinao, the provincial police chief, said.
Most of the deaths in Batangas have been attributed to rain-induced landslides.
More than 20 bodies were pulled from heaps of mud, boulders and fallen trees, while police said at least a dozen people in the province were still missing.
“We will continue searching until all bodies are retrieved,” Malinao said.
About 575,000 people had been displaced by floods, which submerged hundreds of villages in swaths of northern Philippines, according to the national disaster agency.
Moving westward, Trami made landfall in central Vietnam on Sunday afternoon bringing heavy rain and winds of up to 74 kilometres per hour (46 miles per hour), the country’s national disaster authority said.
It knocked down trees and power lines in the coastal city of Da Nang, with state media reporting that three people were killed before and when the storm arrived in Quang Nam and Thua Thien Hue provinces.
Before landfall, authorities had banned boats from going to sea, closed four airports and evacuated some 25,000 people in Danang, Quang Nam and Quang Ngai provinces.
A recent study showed that storms in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change.
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© Agence France-Presse
Featured image credit: kjpargeter | Freepik
