Death toll rises to 198 in Philippines typhoon

Typhoon Durian smashed into the Philippines with heavy rains and winds gusting up to 165 mph, spawning flash floods and sending walls of muddy volcanic ash and red-hot boulders crashing down on several villages, officials said today.

The national Office of Civil Defence reported 198 people were killed and 260 were missing.

Fernando Gonzalez, governor of worst-hit Albay province, said the figures included 109 people who died in mudslides on the slopes of the Mayon volcano that also injured 130.

“The disaster covered almost every corner of this province – rampaging floods, falling trees, damaged houses,” Gonzalez said.

With power and phone lines downed by powerful winds, helicopters were carrying out aerial surveillance of cut-off areas. Officials estimated that the storm had affected some 22,000 people.

“Our rescue teams are overstretched rescuing people on rooftops,” Glen Rabonza, head of the Office of Civil Defence, said after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was briefed on the storm’s devastation.

The typhoon weakened today as it moved north of Mindoro island south of Manila with sustained winds of 94 mph and gusts of up to 116 mph as it headed toward the South China Sea.

Gonzalez said seven or eight villages had been hit by the wet lava flows that rumbled down Mayon's slopes for three hours today.

“It happened very rapidly and many people did not expect this because they haven’t experienced mud flows in those areas before,” Gonzalez said. “By the time they wanted to move, the rampaging mud flows were upon them.”

Cars zig-zagged on the road to the affected area to avoid uprooted trees and toppled utility posts. Steel pylons had been bent down by the wind, and power cables lay scattered about like strands of spaghetti.

With the sky surprisingly blue already, people were digging foundations for new homes, hammering tin sheets onto leaking roofs and drying pillows, mattresses and clothes in the sun.

“The wind was extremely strong,” said Domingo Billares, sitting beside his wife in the town of Ragay, in Camarines Sur province, where the wooden frame was the only thing left of their home. “We thought we would not survive through the day.”

Undersecretary Dr Graciano Yumul of the Department of Science and Technology said the storm was particularly damaging because it came ashore yesterday in Catanduanes, an island province with no mountains to break the storm’s momentum.

“So it really destroyed the island that it hit,” Yumul said. “That is the reason you are seeing the kind of destruction you are seeing right now.

Noel Rosal, mayor of Legazpi city, Albay province’s capital, visited Padang village, where he said some victims had their clothes ripped off as they were swept away while the mudslide crashed down with molten rocks as big as a car.

“It’s terrible. We now call this place a black desert,” he said.

Mayon erupted in July, depositing millions of tons of rocks and volcanic ash on its slopes, and has continued to rumble since then. Rains from succeeding typhoons may have loosened the materials.

Rosal said three of the five communities comprising the village of 1,400 people had been “wiped out” with only the roofs of several houses jutting out of the debris.

Rosal said Padang can only be reached by foot or motorcycle because a bridge linking it to Legazpi, about six miles away, was damaged.

He said the mudslide occurred at mid-afternoon yesterday as the city was lashed by Typhoon Durian. His own residence was under water that was “higher than a person” from a flash flood.

“I was almost a goner. I had to swim,” Rosal said.

Jukes Nunez of the Albay Provincial Disaster Co-ordinating Council said many communities in Legazpi were still flooded this morning.

“The request for rescue is overwhelming. The disaster managers are victims themselves,” he said.

Durian was the fourth “super typhoon” to hit the Philippines in as many months. In late September, Typhoon Xangsane left 230 people dead and missing in and around Manila. Typhoon Cimaron killed 19 people and injured 58 others last month, and earlier this month, Chebi sliced through the central Luzon region, killing one.

About 20 typhoons and tropical storms hit the Philippines each year.