By james art Trami blasted off the northwestern Philippines on Friday, leaving at least 81 people dead and 34 others missing in one of the Southeast Asian archipelago’s deadliest and most destructive storms so far this year, the government’s disaster response agency said.
The death toll was expected to rise as reports came from previously isolated areas.
Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency personnel, backed by three diggers and tracking dogs, dug up one of the last two missing villagers in the coastal town of Talisay in Batangas province on Saturday.
A father waiting for information about his missing 14-year-old daughter cried as rescuers placed the remains in a black body bag.
Distraught, he followed police officers who carried the body sack down a mud-covered country lane to a police van when a tearful female resident approached him to offer her condolences.
The man said he was sure it was his daughter, but authorities needed to make checks to confirm the identity of the villager dug up in the mound.
At a nearby downtown basketball gym, more than a dozen white coffins were laid side by side, carrying the remains of those found in the piles of mud, rocks and trees that tumbled Thursday afternoon down the steep slope of a forested ridge in Talisay’s Sampalok village .
President Ferdinand Marcos, who inspected another hard-hit region southeast of Manila on Saturday, said the unusually high volume of rainfall dumped by the storm — including some areas that saw one to two months of rain in just 24 hours — was manageable. of floods in provinces attacked by Trami.
“The water was just too much,” Mr Marcos told reporters.
“We are not done with our rescue work yet,” he said. “Our problem here is that there are still many areas that remain flooded and cannot be accessed even by large trucks.”
His administration, Mr. Marcos said, will plan to start work on a major flood control project that can respond to the unprecedented threats posed by climate change.
More than 4.2 million people were in the storm’s path, including nearly half a million who fled to more than 6,400 emergency shelters in several provinces, the government agency said.
In an emergency cabinet meeting, Mr Marcos expressed concern over reports by government forecasters that the storm – the 11th to hit the Philippines this year – could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea .
The storm was forecast to hit Vietnam over the weekend if it did not veer off course.
The Philippine government closed schools and government offices for a third day on Friday to keep millions of people safe on the main northern island of Luzon.
Inter-island ferry services were also suspended, stranding thousands.
The weather cleared in many areas on Saturday, allowing for cleanup work in most areas.
Each year, about 20 storms and typhoons hit the Philippines, an archipelago that lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.
In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones on record, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and flattened entire villages.