Floods and landslides in the Philippines leave at least 130 dead

Talisay, Philippines. The number of dead and missing in flooding and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Trami in the Philippines has reached nearly 130, and the president said Saturday that many areas remain isolated, with people needing rescue.

Trami moved away from the northwestern Philippines on Friday, leaving at least 85 people dead and 41 missing in one of the deadliest and most destructive storms so far this year in the Southeast Asian archipelago, the government’s disaster response agency said. . The number of deaths is expected to increase as information is obtained from the areas that have been isolated.

Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency personnel, backed by three backhoes and sniffer dogs, on Saturday unearthed one of the last two missing villagers in the town of Talisay in Batangas province.

A father, waiting for news of his missing 14-year-old daughter, cried as rescuers placed the remains into a black body bag. Heartbroken, he followed police officers carrying the bag down a muddy alley toward a police van when a resident approached him to offer condolences.

The man said he was sure it was his daughter, but authorities need to conduct tests to confirm the identity of the person unearthed in the mound.

In a nearby basketball gym, in the center of town, there was a row of white coffins with the remains of people found under the layers of mud, rocks and trees that fell Thursday afternoon down the steep slope of a forested ridge in the town of Sampaloc, in Talisay.

President Ferdinand Marcos, who on Saturday inspected another badly hit region southeast of Manila, said the unusually high volume of rain brought on by the storm — including in some areas that saw the equivalent of one or two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours—far exceeded flood controls in the provinces hit by Trami.

“It was just too much water,” Marcos told reporters.

“We have not finished our rescue work yet,” he said. “Our problem is that there are still many flooded areas that even large trucks cannot access.”

Marcos said the government will make plans to begin work on a major flood control project that can address the unprecedented threats posed by climate change.

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