http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcMj92oUozE#325 dead, hundreds still missing due to 'Pablo'
NEW BATAAN, Philippines (UPDATE) - The death toll from a typhoon that ravaged the Philippines jumped to 325 on Thursday with hundreds more missing, as rescuers battled to reach areas cut off by floods and mudslides due to typhoon "Pablo" (international codename, Bopha).
"We have 325 dead and this is expected to rise because many more are missing," civil defense chief Benito Ramos told a news conference.
Ramos noted that figures on the fatalities and missing persons were "rising rapidly from single- to triple-digits" as rescuers reach more remote areas.
In a report released Thursday morning, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said 379 were missing and 411 were injured.
"Communications are bogged down, there is no electricity, roads and bridges have been destroyed," Ramos said.
"We're still on a search-and-rescue mode," he added.
Ramos meanwhile warned seafarers to exercise caution even though Bopha blew out to the South China Sea overnight Wednesday.
"It does not mean that our waters are safe now," he said.
Typhoon Pablo slammed into the southern island of Mindanao Tuesday, toppling trees and blowing away thousands of homes with 210-kilometer (130-mile) per hour gusts before easing and heading towards the South China Sea.
Most of the deaths were in the gold-rush mountain towns of New Bataan and Monkayo due to typhoon-spawned landslides and flash floods there, Ramos earlier said.
Twenty-one people were killed in other parts of the southern island of Mindanao and the central islands, he added.
Cabinet members Mar Roxas and Corazon Soliman, who flew to the south to inspect the damage, described scenes of utter devastation with thousands of houses ripped apart and corpses lying on the ground.
"These are whole families, six or seven names with the same surnames. It is saddening to think entire families have been washed away," Interior Secretary Roxas said.
"There is hardly any structure that is undamaged," he said in an interview over ABS-CBN television.
"We need to rush to these areas body bags, medicines, dry clothes and most importantly tents, because survivors are living out in the open," Social Welfare Secretary Soliman told AFP.
Bodies caked in mud were being transported on the back of army trucks and laid out in rows on tarpaulins where relatives searching for missing family members broke down as they identified the shrouded corpses of loved ones.
Shell-shocked survivors scrabbled through the rubble of their homes to find anything that could be recovered among a surrounding wasteland of flattened banana and coconut trees.
Ramos said over 250 other people were still missing, while 401 others were treated for injuries.
About 167,000 people remained huddled in evacuation centers, mostly crowded schoolhouses, gyms and other government buildings, officials said.
Meanwhile, rescue personnel still struggled to reach areas cut off by the storm where many more casualties might be found.
President Benigno Aquino said he hoped the country was learning from its frequent natural disasters, including the roughly 20 cyclones that hit each year.
"Any single casualty is a cause for distress. Our aim must always be about finding ways to lessen them," he told reporters in Manila, while pointing out the "big difference" in casualty counts compared with previous storms.
The more than 500 dead or missing in Pablo was still below the 1,200 deaths from tropical storm Sendong (Washi), which hit in December 2011, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless in Mindanao, he said.
Aquino said the government was investigating why an army patrol base in New Bataan, which was washed away in the flash floods, had been located in a flood-prone area.
Officials were also checking reports that an evacuation centre there was among the structures wiped out in the floods, the president added.
"According to (survivors), there is a small lake on the mountain that gave way so the waters flowed down, not just along the rivers... but all across, like a waterfall, bringing a slurry that covered the whole town," Roxas said.
One shelter there had caved in during the typhoon, forcing the people inside to flee to an even smaller building, he said.
Pablo was the most powerful of the 16 storms to pummel the Philippines this year, though Mindanao is not usually on the front line.
Regional military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Paniza said three soldiers taking part in rescue operations were killed in New Bataan, with eight others from the same unit among the missing.
"It is quite sad and tragic. They were actually there to be ready to help our countrymen who may be in trouble," Roxas said.
Sources:
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/regions/12/06/12/325-dead-hundreds-still-missing-due-pabloLinkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=23019.0
