MANILA, PHILIPPINES (AP) – More than 100 people have died in one of the most destructive storms to lash the Philippines this year with dozens more feared missing after villagers fled in the wrong direction and got buried in a boulder-laden mudslide. Almost two million others were swamped by floods in several provinces, officials said yesterday.
At least 53 of 105 people who died – mostly in flash floods and landslides – were from Maguindanao province in a Muslim autonomous region, which was swamped by unusually heavy rains set off by Tropical Storm Nalgae.
The storm blew out into the South China Sea on Sunday, leaving a trail of destruction in a large swath of the archipelago.
A large contingent of rescuers with bulldozers, backhoes and sniffer dogs resumed retrieval work in southern Kusiong village in hard-hit Maguindanao, where as many as 80 to 100 people, including entire families, are feared to have been buried by a boulder-laden mudslide or swept away by flash floods that started overnight on Thursday, said Interior Minister for the Bangsamoro autonomous region Naguib Sinarimbo.
The government’s main disaster-response agency said there were at least 98 storm deaths, and seven other fatalities were later reported by three provincial governors. At least 69 people were injured and 63 others remain missing.
About 1.9 million people were lashed by the storm, including more than 975,000 villagers who fled to evacuation centres or homes of relatives. At least 4,100 houses and 40,180 acres of rice and other crops were damaged by floodwaters at a time when the country was bracing for a looming food crisis because of global supply disruptions, officials said.
Sinarimbo said the official tally of missing people did not include most of those feared missing in the huge mudslide that hit Kusiong because entire families may have been buried and no member was left to provide names and details to authorities.
