Clinging to life amid floods chaos

Published on Sunday 27 September 2009 22:58

RESCUERS plucked bodies from muddy floodwaters and saved drenched survivors from rooftops yesterday after a tropical storm tore through the northern Philippines and left at least 106 people dead or missing.

It was the region's worst flooding in more than four decades. The government declared a "state of calamity" in metropolitan Manila and 25 other provinces.

Tropical storm Ketsana reared up on Saturday, dumping more than a month's worth of rain in just 12 hours.

The resulting landslides and flooding have left at least 83 people dead and 23 others missing, defence secretary Gilbert Teodoro said. Many parts of the capital remained flooded yesterday, though waters are receding.

Television footage shot from a military helicopter showed drenched survivors marooned on top of half-submerged buses and on rooftops in the suburbs of Manila.

Some, dangerously, clung on to high-voltage power lines, while others plodded through waist-high flood waters.

Authorities deployed rescue teams on boats to save other survivors sighted during an aerial check.

More than 330,000 people have been affected by the storm, including some 59,000 who were brought to about 100 schools, churches and other evacuation shelters, officials said.

Declaring a state of calamity allowed officials to use emergency funds for relief and rescue. Mr Teodoro said that troops, police and civilian volunteers have rescued more than 5,100 people.

Many residents lost all their belongings in the storm, but were thankful they were alive.

"We're back to zero," said Ronald Manlangit, a resident of the city of Marikina, near Manila. However, he expressed relief that he had managed to move all his children to the second floor of his house on Saturday as floods engulfed the ground floor.

Mud covered everything – cars, the road and vegetables in a public market near Mr Manlangit's house.

Joselito Mendoza, governor of Bulacan province, north of the capital, said it was tragic that "people drowned in their own houses" as the storm raged.

The most recently reported fatalities included nine people in Bulacan, most of them drowned. A landslide in northern Pampanga province killed 12 villagers. A soldier and four militiamen also drowned, while trying to rescue villagers in southern Laguna province.

In Marikina, a rescuer gingerly lifted the mud-covered body of a child from a boat. Rescuers carried away four other bodies, including that of a woman found in a church, after a search in one neighbourhood. Distress calls and e-mails from thousands of residents in metropolitan Manila and their worried relatives bombarded television and radio stations overnight. Ketsana swamped entire towns, set off landslides and shut down Manila's airport for several hours.

"My son is sick and alone. He has no food and he may be waiting on the roof of his house. Please get somebody to save him," a weeping housewife, Mary Coloma, told radio DZBB.