At least 59 people lost their lives of the huge landslides caused by Maggie Tropical Storm in the central Philippineswhere rescue teams today continue to dig with excavators or even with bare hands to locate victims in villages submerged in mud.
At least five people were killed in Pilar, a coastal village of about 400 people in the central province of Leite, according to police.
Most of the houses were literally submerged in the sea by a huge landslide.
According to the Athenian-Macedonian News Agency, 22-year-old Ara Mae Kanuto was at her family home in Pilar when she heard a noise “like the one making the helicopter”. He tried to escape, but was trapped by the muddy waters and almost drowned.
«My ears and nose were filled with mudTold AFP from the hospital where he is being treated. Her father lost his life and her mother is missing.
Arriving by boat at Pilar, as the roads were blocked, rescue crews managed to evacuate about fifty survivors to the neighboring city of Abu Dhabi.
When their ship arrived, rescuers rushed to take care of them wounds of the wounded and wrap them in survival blankets.
«This disaster has broken my heartWrites on Facebook Lemuel Jean Traya, the mayor of Abu Dhabi, where Pilar is located.
According to him, this village was “completely destroyed”.
Most of those killed – at least 48, according to local authorities – are located around Baybay, also in Leite County. Many rural villages in the area were suddenly buried under red mud rivers flowing from the hills.
The surveys for missing, which were interrupted yesterday when it got dark, resumed dawn today, using special equipment or even with bare hands. According to local authorities, the improvement in weather conditions has allowed rescue teams to gain access to the worst-hit areas.
“We were told to be on alert because a storm was approaching, but we were not directly told to evacuate the area“Said Loderika Portarkos, a farmer in the village of Bunga, who lost 17 members of her family, as well as a friend from the disaster.
In the middle of a unbearable smell of death intensified by humidity and heat, 47-year-old Portarkos leads an excavator to the place where he had seen three corpses sunk in the mud.
«Our deceased parents are in the morgue, but we do not have time to organize their funeralBecause of the decomposition of the corpses, he said.
Tropical Storm Maggie also killed three people in the Negros Oriental province of the central Philippines and three others in the southern island of Mindanao, according to the National Disaster Management Agency.
The Philippine Army, along with the Coast Guard, the Fire Department and the police, are involved in rescue operations.
Maggie, known in the Philippines by the local name Agaton, is the first major tropical storm to hit the country this yearwhich often faces natural disasters.
It also excluded thousands of travelers at the beginning of Holy Week of Catholic Easter, which is traditionally one of the most important travel times for Filipinos.
As the planet is affected by climate changetropical storms and hurricanes are becoming increasingly powerful, scientists warn.
The Philippines, which ranks among the most vulnerable to the effects of global warming, is affected an average of 20 tropical storms per year.
By December 2021, Hurricane Rai had killed more than 400 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless, wreaking havoc across much of the country. Earlier in 2013, Hurricane Haiyan, one of the strongest to hit Earth, was estimated to have left more than 7,300 dead or missing.
Source: News Beast
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