Over 100 dead, dozens missing in storm-ravaged Philippines

Rescuers carry a body at Maguindanao's Datu Odin Sinsuat town, southern Philippines on Sunday October 30, 2022.

More than 100 people have died in one of the most destructive storms to lash the Philippines this year with dozens more feared missing after villagers fled in the wrong direction and got buried in a boulder-laden mudslide. Almost two million others were swamped by floods in several provinces, officials said Monday.

At least 53 of 105 people who died — mostly in flash floods and landslides — were from Maguindanao province in a Muslim autonomous region, which was swamped by unusually heavy rains set off by Tropical Storm Nalgae. The storm blew out into the South China Sea on Sunday, leaving a trail of destruction in a large swath of the archipelago.

A large contingent of rescuers with bulldozers, backhoes and sniffer dogs resumed retrieval work in southern Kusiong village in hard-hit Maguindanao, where as many as 80 to 100 people, including entire families, are feared to have been buried by a boulder-laden mudslide or swept away by flash floods that started overnight Thursday, said Naguib Sinarimbo, the interior minister for the Bangsamoro autonomous region run by former separatist guerrillas under a peace pact.

The government's main disaster-response agency said there were at least 98 storm deaths, and seven other fatalities were later reported by three provincial governors. At least 69 people were injured and 63 others remain missing.

About 1.9 million people were lashed by the storm, including more than 975,000 villagers who fled to evacuation centres or homes of relatives. At least 4,100 houses and 16,260 hectares (40,180 acres) of rice and other crops were damaged by floodwaters at a time when the country was bracing for a looming food crisis because of global supply disruptions, officials said.

Sinarimbo said the official tally of missing people did not include most of those feared missing in the huge mudslide that hit Kusiong because entire families may have been buried and no member was left to provide names and details to authorities.

The catastrophe in Kusiong, populated mostly by the Teduray ethnic minority group, was particularly tragic because its more than 2,000 villagers have carried out disaster-preparedness drills every year for decades to brace for a tsunami because of a deadly history. But they were not as prepared for the dangers that could come from Mount Minandar, where their village lies at the foothills, Sinarimbo said.

"When the people heard the warning bells, they ran up and gathered in a church on a high ground," Sinarimbo told The Associated Press on Saturday, citing accounts by Kusiong villagers.

"The problem was, it was not a tsunami that inundated them but a big volume of water and mud that came down from the mountain," he said.

In August 1976, an 8.1-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami in the Moro Gulf that struck around midnight left thousands of people dead and devastated coastal provinces in one of the deadliest natural disasters in Philippine history.

Death toll from tropical storm Nalgae rises to 132, dozens missing in Philippines

At least 132 people have died in the severe tropical storm Nalgae that battered the Philippines over the weekend, the government said Tuesday, according to Xinhua.

Nalgae, one of the most destructive cyclones that battered the Philippines, triggered flash floods and landslides in many parts of the Southeast Asian country.

The Office of Civil Defense reported a total of 132 deaths as of Monday.

However, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council tallied 110 fatalities, of which 79 were confirmed, while the identities of the other 31 are still being verified. Of the 33 reported missing, the agency confirmed 23, while the identities of the other 10 are still being verified.

The agency said 59 deaths were from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in the southern Philippines. At least 16 in the region remain missing.

The rest of the fatalities were from nine regions on the main Luzon island, in the central Philippines, and other areas on Mindanao island in the southern Philippines outside of the BARMM.

The agency said the tropical storm affected over 2.4 million people, damaged 364 roads and 82 bridges, and caused power outages in many areas.

Nalgae is the 16th tropical cyclone to lash the Philippines this year. It slammed into Catanduanes, an island province in the Bicol region, before dawn Saturday.

More rain on the way as Philippine storm death toll hits 150

The death toll from a powerful storm that triggered flooding and landslides across the Philippines has reached 150, disaster officials said Thursday, as more rain was forecast in some of the hardest-hit areas.

More than 355,400 people fled their homes as Severe Tropical Storm Nalgae pounded swathes of the archipelago nation late last week and over the weekend.

Of the 150 deaths recorded by the national disaster agency, 63 were in the Bangsamoro region on the southern island of Mindanao where flash floods and landslides destroyed villages.

At least 128 people were injured and 36 are still missing across the country, the agency said. Authorities have warned there is no hope of finding more survivors.

Mindanao is rarely hit by the 20 or so typhoons that strike the Philippines each year, but storms that do reach the region tend to be deadlier than in Luzon and the central parts of the country.

With more rain forecast Thursday, disaster agencies in Bangsamoro were preparing for the possibility of further destruction in the poor and mountainous region.

"The soil is still wet in areas where flash floods and landslides occurred so further erosion could be instantly triggered," said Naguib Sinarimbo, regional civil defense chief.

"Waterways and rivers that were in the path of the flash floods are blocked by debris and boulders so they could easily overflow."

President Ferdinand Marcos has blamed deforestation and climate change for the devastating landslides in Bangsamoro.

He has urged local authorities to plant trees on denuded mountains.

"That's one thing that we need to do," Marcos told a briefing this week.

"We have been hearing this over and over again, but we still continue cutting trees. That's what happens, landslides like that happen."

Marcos has declared a state of calamity for six months in the worst-affected regions, freeing up funds for relief efforts.