Hunt for landslide victims as typhoon toll rises
MANILA — Philippine rescuers used hand tools on Wednesday in a desperate search for around 20 people buried in a landslide unleashed by Typhoon Yutu, as the powerful storm’s toll rose to 9.
When Yutu struck on Tuesday, torrential rains sparked floods that washed away bridges and fierce gusts razed hundreds of flimsy homes in the nation’s north.
More than 100 workers, police, firefighters and volunteers were scrambling to find more survivors in the avalanche using shovels and their hands because earth-moving equipment could not get through roads blocked by smaller landslides.
“They (searchers) are digging manually but they still cannot penetrate (with heavy equipment),” provincial disaster official Edward Chumawar said. “The clearing operations for road access there are ongoing.”
Five people had been rescued and three corpses found at the scene, with another roughly 20 people still unaccounted for in the compound.
Dramatic images shot on smartphones emerged on Wednesday of swollen, churning rivers and a large concrete bridge washed away by floodwaters.
The howling winds picked trees clean of their leaves in certain areas, and sliced the corrugated metal roofs off homes.
Crews have begun fanning out across the storm’s path on the Philippines’ most populous Luzon island to count the cost of the typhoon, which struck with sustained winds of 150 kilometers per hour and gusts up to 210 km/h.
Most of the other deaths in the storm came due to landslides in hilly areas, including ones that took the lives of a father and his three young children, a 5-year-old girl and a man, police said.
Thousands of people in the typhoon’s path were evacuated before the storm hit from hilly, coastal and river areas on Monday after warnings were issued for landslides and waves of up to 3 meters.
Yutu has weakened substantially since the night of Oct 24, when as a super typhoon packing winds of 270 km/h, it made a direct hit on Saipan and Tinian, two islands of the Northern Marianas, a US territory about 9,000 km west of the US mainland.
It was the strongest storm to hit the archipelago in 50 years and killed a woman and injured more than 130 people. It tore the roofs off buildings, flipped vehicles and damaged generators, water pipes and downed hundreds of electricity poles.
By late Tuesday, Yutu had weakened to a category 2 storm, with maximum winds of 110 km/h and gusts of 135 km/h, the state weather agency PAGASA said.