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January 1, 2015

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Death toll from storm up to 53 in Philippines

THE death toll from flooding and landslides in the Philippines wrought by tropical storm Jangmi rose to 53 yesterday, officials said.

In the town of Catbalogan in Samar province, 19 people died in a landslide that left homes and vehicles buried under rocks and mud, Mayor Stephany Uy-Tan said, adding that the town had been surprised by the landslide.

“We didn’t expect a deluge. We thought the hill where the landslide hit was tough,” she said.

“There was no evacuation, people were just advised to prepare for possible landslides. We need to find out what went wrong,” she said.

Jangmi has so far affected 121,737 people, of whom 80,186 are now in evacuation centers, according to the national disaster monitoring agency, which put the death toll at 53.

The figure is nearly triple that of the last major storm to hit the country, Super Typhoon Hagupit, which struck earlier this month.

In Misamis Oriental province, floods flattened rice and corn fields resulting in an estimated 400 million pesos (US$8.9 million) worth of damage, Governor Yevgeny Emano told DZMM radio.

“We were caught by surprise, we didn’t expect that we’d be hit by the eye of the storm,” Emano said.

Mina Marasigan, the national disaster monitoring agency’s spokeswoman, defended the government’s handling of the storm.

“Maybe people underestimated the situation because it’s a tropical depression, not a super typhoon. They dismissed it as weak,” she said.


 

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