Philippine rescuers look for missing after storm
manila — Rescuers used bulldozers to dig through mountains of mud in the eastern Philippines to search for over 30 people missing after a powerful storm triggered landslides on the weekend, authorities said on Monday.
Tropical Storm Kai-Tak continued to drag its way westward across the archipelago nation on Monday after leaving at least 28 dead over the weekend from drowning and landslides, the government monitoring agency said.
Most of the dead were in the island province of Biliran, which suffered the worst of the landslides, with many homes buried.
Rescuers searching for survivors on the island were not optimistic. “There is an assumption that the missing are already dead,” Sofronio Dacillo, a provincial disaster risk reduction and management officer said.
The largely agricultural island of Biliran, with a population of over 140,000, also suffered massive damage to its roads, bridges and power system, which was knocked out on the weekend.
No power supply
Electricity supply is not expected to be restored until Wednesday, said Dacillo.
“It was like two months of rain fell on one day in Biliran. And because of this, the soil really softened and that is also why so many bridges were destroyed,” said President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman Harry Roque. Duterte is due to visit Biliran later Monday to inspect the damage and rescue efforts, said Roque.
Kai-Tak’s winds were not very powerful, but its slow movement across the central islands unleashed heavy rains over a long period, flooding large areas.
Many of the islands hit by KaiTak also bore the brunt of Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, which left more than 7,350 people dead or missing. —