PHILIPPINES STORM KILLS 200, 144 MISSING

40,000 forced to flee homes, say police

MANILA Mindanao island, home to 20 million people, on Friday with strong gusts and torrential rain, wiping out at least one mountain village and prompting a massive rescue operation.

Police said 144 people remained missing, while more than 40,000 had fled their homes to evacuation camps as Tembin roared out into the South China Sea early yesterday.

A total of 70,000 have been displaced or otherwise affected by the storm, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which warned that continued heavy rain could hamper the search for survivors.

“People left everything behind when they fled for their lives,” the IFRC’s Philippines operations and programmes manager Patrick Elliott said.

The archipelago nation is pummelled by major storms every year, many of them deadly. Mindanao tends to be less affected, and officials said this might have caused many to ignore warnings to move to safer ground.

Footage showed vast tracts of land on the island submerged by brown water, often waist-deep, with streets turning into rivers.

Local police said 135 people were killed and 72 missing in the northern section of Mindanao, while 47 were dead and 72 missing in the impoverished Zamboanga peninsula on its western side. Another 18 perished in the province of Lanao del Sur in the centre of the island.

One of the places hit hardest was the mountain village of Dalama, which was virtually wiped off the map as rampaging floodwaters carried away 103 houses.

Footage on ABS-CBN showed houses there destroyed or engulfed by floodwaters. Police, soldiers and volunteers used shovels and their bare hands to dig through mud and debris in their search for survivors. AFP