Philippines appeals for aid for storm victims

Philippine officials sought international help today to rebuild villages devastated by back-to-back storms that left more than 1,100 people either dead or missing and devastated mostly poor northern agricultural regions.

The storm and typhoon that struck late on Monday and Thursday left 566 people dead and 546 others missing and set off flash floods and landslides that destroyed hundreds of houses, farms, roads and bridges.

Damaged infrastructure has hampered rescue efforts and the flow of relief goods to far-flung villages, officials said.

Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman appealed to foreign governments for help.

“The appeal we’re now making is in rehabilitation,” Soliman said. “That really means rebuilding water systems, toilets, livelihood in agriculture for people whose farmlands were buried in mud.”

Australia, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, the United States as well as UN agencies and the International Red Cross were among the first to respond with financial help, transport and relief goods.

US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone, who flew by helicopter today to villages in the hard-hit eastern province of Quezon, said roads and bridges needed to be repaired immediately to allow relief goods to flow to isolated areas.

“The devastation was worse than I had imagined,” Ricciardone said. “It was quite distressing, logs everywhere, mud everywhere, roads were cut off in many places and bridges were down.”

Washington offered to dispatch troops to undertake humanitarian help, including at least one helicopter for transport and a team of US military damage assessment experts.

It also donated £100,000, 500 body bags and plastic shelter materials to the Philippine Red Cross, he said.

Marie North, a spokeswoman for the International Federation of Red Cross, said the group has launched an international appeal to buy emergency relief supplies.

Even as help got underway, hundreds of villagers tried to leave hard-hit areas, including Real town in Quezon where more than 400 people jammed a ferry capable of carrying only 108 passengers.

The coast guard allowed the ferry to sail to a nearby town after passengers agreed to get off.

Rosalie Salvidar, a 25-year-old cashier, stood at the Real pier with her family’s muddied belongings – a small refrigerator, TV set, desktop computer, electric fan and three sacks of clothes – which she and relatives dug out from the muck where their house once stood before it was destroyed by log-laden mudslides in nearby Infanta town.

Salvidar said she and her husband, father and other relatives were going back to their hometown in another Quezon town. “We don’t have a home now,” she said.

Most of the destruction was wrought by a tropical storm that blew through north-eastern provinces late on Monday, killing at least 529 people and leaving 508 others missing.

Typhoon Nanmadol then struck the same region late on Thursday, leaving 37 dead and 38 missing, according to revised figures by the Office of Civil Defense.

Deforestation has stripped hillsides of vegetation that could have held mud and other debris in place during last week’s tropical storm and typhoon, and many believe years of illegal logging set off the landslides.

Reinforcing that view, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday suspended all logging and said illegal loggers would be prosecuted like terrorists, kidnappers, drug traffickers and other hardened criminals. She called for unity amid the disaster.

It wasn’t clear how long the moratorium would last or whether it would be enforced nationwide.

Arroyo also urged Congress to stiffen penalties against illegal loggers and their cohorts.

The Philippines is hit by about 20 storms and typhoons a year. A typhoon and another storm the previous week killed at least 91 people and left 84 others missing in the east.