The FINANCIAL — At least 100 people have been killed and scores are missing after tropical storm hit the Philippine capital and nearby provinces.
Another 32 people are missing, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said on September 28, and officials fear the death toll could rise further as the flood waters gradually recede from the most badly affected areas, according to The Wall Street Journal. Disease is also a threat; the inundation of putrid, polluted water is raising concerns about typhoid and bacterial infections.
Teodoro said that army troops, police and civilian volunteers, backed by U.S. troops, are continuing a search and rescue effort, AP reported. He says welfare agencies have begun to provide food, medicine and other help to more than 115,000 people in government-run emergency shelters.
Torrential rains from Tropical Storm Ketsana flooded the capital Manila and nearby provinces on Saturday, according to BBC. Some 80% of Manila is said to be under water, with 435,000 people displaced.
"We are concentrating on massive relief operations. The system is overwhelmed, local government units are overwhelmed," Golez told reporters, the same source informs. "We were used to helping one city, one or two provinces but now, they are following one after another. Our assets and people are spread too thinly."
The government declared a "state of calamity" in metropolitan Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces, allowing officials to use emergency funds for relief and rescue, according to Guardian.
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the president, today opened up the presidential palace as an emergency centre for victims, the same source reported. She said the storm and flooding were "an extreme event" that "strained our response capabilities to the limit but ultimately did not break us". Joselito Mendoza, the governor of Bulacan province, north of the capital, said: "People drowned in their own houses."
The Philippines chief weather forecaster, Nathaniel Cruz, said more than 40cm (16in) of rain fell on Manila within 12 hours on Saturday, exceeding the 39cm (15in) average for the whole month of September, according to BBC. The previous record of just over 33cm (13in) in a 24 hour period was set in June 1967, Cruz added. He had earlier blamed climate change for the mass downpours.
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