Philippines storm death toll past 650 with hundreds still missing

Philippine Red Cross secretary-general Gwendolyn Pang said that flash floods set off by Tropical Storm Washi killed 346 people in Cagayan de Oro city and 206 in nearby Iligan city. Deaths were also reported in five other southern and central provinces.

Ms Pang said more people have reported missing relatives, including 447 in Iligan and 347 in Cagayan de Oro.

Tropical Storm Washi blew away yesterday after devastating a wide swathe of the mountainous region on Mindanao island, which is unaccustomed to major storms.

Most of the victims were asleep on Friday night when flash floods cascaded down mountain slopes with logs and uprooted trees, swelling rivers and killing at least 652 people.

The late-season tropical storm turned the worst-hit coastal cities of Cagayan de Oro and nearby Iligan into muddy wastelands filled with overturned cars and broken trees.

Most of the dead were children and women, Ms Pang said. At least 808 others were still missing, mostly in the two cities, she said.

Defence secretary Voltaire Gazmin and top military officials flew to Cagayan de Oro and Iligan to help oversee search-and-rescue efforts and deal with thousands of displaced villagers.

Among the items urgently needed were coffins and body bags, said Benito Ramos, who heads the government’s disaster response agency.

“It’s overwhelming. We didn’t expect these many dead,” said Mr Ramos, adding that authorities were continuing to find bodies floating at sea.

Although the disaster-prone Philippines is lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms annually, the devastation shocked many.

Mr Ramos attributed the high casualties “partly to the complacency of people because they are not in the usual path of storms” despite warnings by officials that one was approaching.

Thousands of soldiers and hundreds of local police, reservists, coast guard officers and civilian volunteers were mobilised for rescue efforts, but were hampered by flooded-out roads and lack of electricity.

Army officers reported unidentified bodies piled up in morgues in Cagayan de Oro, where electricity was restored in some areas, although the city of more than 500,000 people remained without tap water.

Ms Pang said: “Our fear is there may have been whole families that perished so there’s nobody to report what happened.

“Many areas remain isolated and strewn with debris and unreached by rescue teams.”

Most of the victims were asleep on Friday night when raging floodwaters cascaded from the mountains with logs and uprooted trees after 12 hours of rain from the late-season tropical storm in Mindanao.

Local television footage showed muddy water rushing through the streets, sweeping away all sorts of debris. Thick layers of mud coated streets where the waters had subsided. One car was thrown over a concrete fence and others were crushed and piled on top of each other in a flooded canal.

Authorities recovered bodies from the mud after the water subsided. Parts of concrete walls and roofs, toppled vehicles and other debris littered the streets.

Rescuers in boats rushed offshore to save people swept out to sea. In Misamis Oriental province, 60 people were plucked from the ocean off El Salvador city, about six miles north west of Cagayan de Oro.

In 12 hours, Washi dumped more than a month of average rains on Mindanao. Forecaster Leny Ruiz said storms that follow the same path as Washi come only once in about every 12 years.