Over 10K persons evacuate as 'Rosita' whips Luzon

In a press conference, NDRRMC spokesperson Edgar Posadas said a total of 10,122 persons or 2,928 families have been staying in 78 evacuation centers since Sunday in the provinces of La Union, Cagayan, Isabela, Aurora and Benguet.

Posadas said over 12 million people or 2.4 million families are expected to be affected by Rosita in Cagayan Valley, Ilocos, Central Luzon and Cordillera regions.

“Region 2 appears (to have) the highest number of displaced population at this time, 2101 families or 7343 individuals in 31 evacuation centers,” he said.

The NDRRMC also reported that 30 domestic and international flights were cancelled while 1,937 passengers were stranded in sea ports due to cancelled trips of 189 rolling cargo vessels, 11 passenger vessels and one motorbanca.

Posadas said a fisherman in Perez, Quezon went missing on Monday.

"For validation, we have one reported missing case in Perez, Quezon, due to the capsizing of a fishing boat. The incident happened at 4 a.m. yesterday," he said.

Posadas said the NDRRMC remains on red alert status to ensure availability of operations alert teams to respond to emergencies 24/7.

He said four searchand-rescue helicopters from the Philippine Air Force, an ambulance, military trucks and emergency equipment were on standby.

“The NDRRMC has prepositioned communication equipment through our ATCTU, ito po ‘yung sinabi natin kahapon just in case magkaroon ng bog down ito communication ide-deploy natin sila agad together with our SRR-retrieval cluster,” said Posadas. (Third Anne Peralta-Malonzo/SunStar Philippines)