Typhoon deaths climbing
NEW BATAAN, PHILIPPINES – Rescuers were digging through mud and debris Friday to retrieve more bodies strewn across a farming valley in the southern Philippines by a powerful typhoon.
More than 500 people have died, more than 400 are missing and more than 310,000 people have lost their homes since typhoon Bopha struck Tuesday.
The homeless are crowded in evacuation centres or staying with relatives, relying on food and emergency supplies being rushed in by government agencies and aid groups.
“I want to know how this tragedy happened and how to prevent a repeat,” President Benigno Aquino III said during a visit to New Bataan town, the ground zero of the disaster, where ferocious winds and rains lashed the area.
Officials have confirmed 252 dead in Compostela Valley, including New Bataan, and 216 in nearby Davao Oriental province. About two-thirds of the missing are from New Bataan.
Aquino told New Bataan residents gathered in the middle of toppled coconut trees and roofless houses that he was bent on seeking answers to improve their conditions and minimize casualties when natural disasters occur. Fatal storms and typhoons blowing from the Pacific are common in the Philippines, but most of them hit northern and central areas, and southern Mindanao Island is usually spared.
“We are going to look at what really happened. There are allegations of illegal mining, there are allegations of the force of nature,” said Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, who travelled with Aquino. “We will find out why there are homes in these geohazard locations.”
Government geological hazard maps show that New Bataan, a farming town of 45,000, was built in 1968 in an area classified as “highly susceptible to flooding and landslides.”
Most of the deaths occurred in the valley surrounded by steep hills and criss-crossed by rivers. The disaster highlights the risks that some Filipinos take in living in dangerous areas in the hope of feeding their families.
The economic losses began to emerge Friday after export banana growers reported the destruction of 14,000 hectares of export banana plantations, equal to 18 per cent of the total in Mindanao. The Philippines is the world’s third-largest banana producer and exporter.
Stephen Antig, executive director of the Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association, said losses have been conservatively estimated at $300 million, including $200 million in damaged fruits that had been ready for harvest, and the rest for the cost of rehabilitating farms, which will take about a year.