Typhoon Parma leaves 16 dead and dozens of Filipino villages flooded

LANDSLIDES buried two families in the Philippines as they sheltered in their homes from Asia’s latest deadly typhoon, which killed at least 16 people and left more than a dozen villages flooded yesterday.

Typhoon Parma cut a destructive path across the northern Philippines on Saturday but spared the capital, Manila. It headed out to sea, and late yesterday was less than 100 kilometres off the coast, where it was expected to stay for the next three days, forecasters said.

That was close enough to Taiwan to cause heavy rain on the island, where troops were evacuating villages and loading sandbags in preparation for possible flooding.

Philippine police senior superintendent Loreto Espineli said a family of five, including a one-year-old boy, died when their home in Benguet province was buried as Parma hit. Seven people, including another family of five, were buried in a nearby village, he said.

Officials had earlier listed four people as being killed in the typhoon in the Philippines.

Parma hit just eight days after an earlier storm left Manila awash in the worst flooding in four decades, killing almost 300 people. Saturday’s storm dropped more rain on the capital that slowed the cleanup and made conditions more difficult.

Parma was churning over the South China Sea late yesterday and was interacting with another typhoon much father east over the Pacific that caused it to hook back toward the Philippines, chief government forecaster Nathaniel Cruz said. It was not expected to hit the coast again, but could cause heavy rain for the next three days.