The number of persons killed or missing in the Philippines as a result of Tropical Storm Trami’s massive flooding and landslides has surpassed 100.
President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos said Saturday that many places remained isolated with people in need of rescue.
Tropical Storm Trami ripped across the northwestern Philippines on Friday, killing at least 81 people and leaving 34 more missing in one of the Southeast Asian archipelago’s deadliest and most catastrophic storms this year, according to the government’s disaster response agency.
The death toll was expected to rise when more reports from previously inaccessible places received.
Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency personnel, backed by three backhoes and sniffer dogs, dug up one of the last two missing villagers in the lakeside town of Talisay in Batangas province Saturday.
President Ferdinand Marcos, who inspected another hard-hit region southeast of Manila on Saturday, said the storm’s unusually large volume of rainfall — including one to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours — overwhelmed flood controls in Trami-lashed provinces.
The storm affected more than 4.2 million people, including over half a million who evacuated to more than 6,400 emergency shelters across numerous provinces, according to the government agency.