Philippine storm weakens after killing at least sixteen, leaving thousands stranded

A typhoon swept across the northern Philippines killing at least sixteen people as trees, power lines and walls were toppled and flood waters spread far from riverbeds.
Channel NewsAsia 19 Oct 15;

STA. ROSA, Philippines: A typhoon swept across the northern Philippines killing at least sixteen people as trees, power lines and walls were toppled and flood waters spread far from riverbeds, but tens of thousands of people were evacuated in time.

Officials fear the death toll may rise after Typhoon Koppu tore through the main island of Luzon on Sunday leaving several remote towns and villages isolated due to flash floods and toppled trees and boulders blocking roads. Power was down in many areas.

The storm, downgraded to a category 1 typhoon from category 4, was moving slowly north on Monday and was forecast to weaken to a tropical storm within hours.

"We haven't reached many areas. About 60 to 70 percent of our town is flooded, some as deep as 10 feet (3 metres). There are about 20,000 residents in isolated areas that need food and water," said Henry Velarde, vice mayor of Jaen town in Nueva Ecija province, north of Manila.

The national disaster agency said two people died from falling trees and a toppled concrete wall. The coast guard said seven people died at sea.

Villages far from rivers in Nueva Ecija were flooded as water from the mountains came rushing down plains and valleys.

"We were not expecting this. Flood waters suddenly swelled around us so we evacuated to higher ground," said Reynato Simbulan, 44, a village councillor who was among hundreds who fled to schools and village halls in Sta. Rosa town in Nueva Ecija.

"We're seven kilometres away from the river but we were still inundated," Simbulan said adding five-foot floods swept away farm animals and some houses made of light materials.

Nearly 183,000 people felt the impact of the typhoon, of whom more than 65,000 had been evacuated from low-lying and landslide-prone areas, the disaster agency said. About 6,000 people were stranded in various ports across the main Luzon island.

An average of 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year.

- Reuters/al

Flooded residents on rooftops as Koppu pummels Philippines
The slow-moving Typhoon Koppu has left at least two people dead and forced more than 60,000 people to flee from their homes, authorities say.
Channel NewsAsia 19 Oct 15;

JAEN, Philippines: Residents of flooded farming villages in the Philippines were trapped on their rooftops on Monday (Oct 19) and animals floated down fast-rising rivers, as deadly Typhoon Koppu dumped more intense rain.

Koppu, the second strongest storm to hit the disaster-plagued Southeast Asian archipelago this year, has killed two people and forced more than 60,000 people from their homes, authorities said.

After making landfall on Sunday morning on the east coast of Luzon, the Philippines' biggest island, the slow-moving typhoon has brought heavy rain to some of the nation's most important farming areas.

"I've never seen anything like this. It's the worst flood I've seen in my entire life," farmer Reynaldo Ramos, 68, told AFP as he walked through knee-deep water in Santa Rosa, about two hours' drive north of Manila.

Military, local government and volunteer rescue units were trying to help residents in about 70 villages that were under water, with the floods spreading, according to Nigel Lontoc, a regional rescue official.

"The floods are rising fast and some people are now on their rooftops," Lontoc told AFP. "The water is now too deep even for big military trucks, so our people are trying to reach them using rubber boats," he said, but added there were only 10 teams at their disposal at the moment.

Lontoc said many thousands of people may be stranded in those villages, although it was too early to determine an exact number.

PEOPLE, PIGS HUDDLE ON HIGH GROUND

In Santa Rosa, water buffalo, pigs, goats, dogs, washing machines and furniture lined the sides of a storm-tossed highway, where about 200 residents had been seeking refuge from the floods since Sunday night.

Jun Paddayuman, 27, in shorts and a white singlet caked with mud up to his chest, pointed to his nearby house, where flood waters had risen to the roof. "The waters arrived suddenly. We did not expect it at all," he told AFP.

Paddayuman said, when the waters first appeared in his house, he waded to the highway carrying his eight-month pregnant wife and leading his three-year-old son by the hand. Paddayuman said he had seen geese, chicken and dogs being carried off by the rampaging waters.

Nearby, two men pushed pigs placed on top of truck tyre inner tubes in a valiant attempt to save their hog farm from 1.2-metre high flooding.

Wide expanses of rice paddies had disappeared under torrents of knee-deep water throughout the towns and villages north of Manila because of runoff from torrential rain unleashed by Koppu on nearby mountain ranges.

"LULLED INTO COMPLACENCY"

Lontoc, the regional official, said many residents were lulled into complacency because the typhoon had passed north of the region and did not directly strike the low-lying areas.

Koppu initially hit fishing and farming communities on the east coast of Luzon with winds of 210 kilometres an hour, making it the Philippines' second most powerful storm of the year.

By mid-morning on Monday, it was on the far northwest coast of Luzon and nearly out into the South China Sea, with its strongest winds weakening to 150 kilometres an hour, the state weather service said.

But Koppu was still dumping heavy rain and it was forecast to cut back northeast over Luzon and not leave the country until Wednesday.

The Philippines is hit with about 20 major storms a year, many of them deadly. The most powerful storm ever recorded on land, Super Typhoon Haiyan, hit the Philippines in 2013, killing or leaving missing at least 7,350 people.

Koppu had so far claimed just two lives, partly because the typhoon directly passed through sparsely populated mountain and coastal ranges.

A 14-year-old boy was killed in a district of the capital on Sunday after a large tree was pulled over by the winds and fell on his house.

A 62-year-old woman died after a wall in her house collapsed due to heavy rains in Zambales, a province to northwest of Manila, on Saturday night.

Schools were closed amid stormy weather in Manila on Monday, although the capital was not badly impacted.

- AFP/rw/al