Rescue teams find scenes of devastation in Philippines

HELICOPTERS delivered food to survivors and picked up casualties yesterday as flash floods began to recede in the northern Philippines, revealing the magnitude of a disaster that killed more than 650 people and left nearly 400 missing.

Soldiers who reached an isolated village in Aurora province reported finding about 100 dead.

In the worst-hit town of Real, in nearby Quezon province, TV images showed bodies buried under mud and debris with only the soles of their feet visible. Survivors described the stench of rotting bodies.

Some 170,000 have fled their homes for higher ground while health authorities urged local officials to bury the dead quickly.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo appealed to the nation to “come together and reach out to those who need help.”

She said: “We need one great heave to deliver the relief supplies, find the missing, rescue the isolated, feed the hungry and shelter the homeless.”

The brunt of the devastation was wrought by a tropical storm that blew through north-eastern provinces on Monday.

Hardest hit was Quezon province, where 484 bodies have been recovered and 352 people were still missing, he said.

Typhoon Nanmadol then struck the same region on Thursday night.

About 100 people were found dead in the coastal village of Dumingan, about 60 miles north-east of Manila. It was unclear where they died in Monday’s storm or the typhoon.

“Our soldiers now are helping the populace to recover the survivors and bury the dead,” said Major General Romeo Tolentino, the regional military commander. He added that landslides were blocking the road to the village.

In Real, Mayor Arsenio Ramallosa said there was little damage from the typhoon, but that the Monday storm left scores of dead and missing.

“We have been severely devastated,” he said. “Our food supply is dwindling and good for only another three days.”

He said a building at a beach resort, where about 100 people sought shelter during the storm, collapsed when it was hit by a landslide. Most of the people were still buried, but one man was excavated alive today, he said.

Aiviem Payubay, aged 17, said she and her six siblings shouted for help when the flood and mudslides hit, “but it was raining so hard, nobody could hear us.”