More than a thousand people are dead or missing after flash floods that ravaged the southern Philippines, the government said Tuesday as cities prepared for mass burials. Some 957 people have been killed and 49 others are missing after tropical storm Washi lashed the southern island of Mindanao and surrounding areas over the weekend, said Civil Defense Chief Benito Ramos.
Washi brought heavy rains that swelled rivers, unleashing flash floods and landslides that struck in the dead of night and swept away shantytowns built near river mouths. The toll rose sharply as the bodies of people who were swept out to sea were recovered.
“They were underwater for the first three days but now, in their state of decomposition, they are bloated and floating to the surface,” Ramos said.
President Benigno Aquino flew to Mindanao on Tuesday to survey the devastation by air, coordinate the relief effort, and express his condolences to the victims’ relatives, aides said. Aquino said the impoverished nation of 94 million people was now in a “state of calamity”, his spokesman Ricky Carandang told reporters.
With dead bodies lying everywhere, there was controversy over Cagayan de Oro authorities’ decision to bring at least 20 unclaimed cadavers to a nearby landfill for temporary storage. Pictures of the bodies, kept under a tent just a few metres (yards) away from the dump where scavengers picked through piles of garbage for items to salvage, caused outrage as they circulated on social networking sites.
More than 284,000 people have been displaced by the storm with over 42,000 huddled in crowded, makeshift government evacuation centres, the the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said. Meanwhile, UNICEF appealed for $4.2 million (3.2 million euros) on Tuesday to help an estimated 200,000 children in the flood-ravaged Philippines.
A lack of clean water and sanitation facilities is causing major concern, children’s aid agency UNICEF said, after the storm destroyed the water systems in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan.
“Most residents have been left with no safe, reliable source of water,” said the organisation, which is helping provide aid to the 20,000 children currently staying in evacuation centres. Up to 45,000 people were displaced by the floods it said, quoting the country’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.
