PH to send humanitarian mission, medicines to Japan
The Philippine government is ready to deploy a humanitarian mission to Japan amid severe flooding and landslides triggered by a powerful typhoon that has already claimed 156 lives in one of Japan’s worst weather-related disasters in decades.
President Duterte has offered
to send a team of soldiers, engineers and doctors to join the rescue and rehabilitation efforts of typhoon-hit Japan, according to presidential spokesperson Harry Roque.
The President’s decision to rush aid to Japan was reached during a Cabinet meeting in Malacañang Monday night.
Roque said the President also promised to send medicines to Japan, considered a close economic and defense ally of the Philippines.
On Tuesday, rescue workers carried out house-to-house searches hoping to find survivors after days of deadly floods and landslides.
“It’s what we call a grid operation, where we are checking every single house to see if there are people still trapped inside them,” an official with the local Okayama prefecture government told AFP.
“We know it’s a race against time, we are trying as hard as we can.”
Hideto Yamanaka was leading a team of around 60 firefighters dispatched from outside the prefecture searching homes.
“I’m afraid elderly people who were living alone may have failed to escape,” said Yamanaka, 53.
“Physically weak people may have been late in getting out when it suddenly started raining hard, swamping the area,” he told AFP.
The record downpours that began last week have stopped and receding flood waters have laid bare the destruction that has cut a swathe through the west of the country.
In the city of Kurashiki, the flooding engulfed entire districts at one point, forcing some people to their rooftops to wait for rescue.
Fumiko Inokuchi, 61, was inside her home, sorting through the damage caused by floods that submerged the entire first floor.
She escaped the house on Saturday, crossing the street to take shelter in a three-storey care home for the elderly, from where she watched in horror as the waters rose.
“I saw my house sink underwater and I couldn’t do anything at all, there was just nothing I could do. I felt helpless,” she said, retrieving a photo of her children playing baseball.
“I got married here, and we built this house two years afterwards. We raised our three small sons to adulthood here, there are so many memories,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. (With a report from AFP)