Rescuers in the Philippines searched on Sunday (Dec 24) for survivors of a storm that triggered floods and landslides and killed about 200 people, left scores missing and thousands homeless, most of whom apparently ignored warnings to move to safety. 

Misery in the largely Christian Philippines was compounded by the death of at least 37 people in a shopping mall fire, officials said on Christmas Eve. 

The Philippines is battered by about 20 typhoons a year and warnings are routinely issued, but the level of destruction wreaked by tropical storm Tembin on the southern island of Mindanao, home to 20 million people, from late on Friday came as a surprise.

 

Tembin brought with it gusts of 125km an hour and torrential rain, wiping out at least one mountain village and prompting a massive rescue operation over the weekend. 

“The figure could increase as we continue to received reports from the field as the weather improves,” said a police spokesman on Mindanao, Superintendent Lemuel Gonda, referring to the death toll.  “We are slowly restoring power and communications in affected areas.”

Disaster officials said as Tembin roared out into the South China Sea early Sunday that 159 people were listed as missing while about 70,000 had been forced from their homes. 

   

Soldiers and police joined emergency workers and volunteers to search for survivors and victims, clear debris and restore power and communications.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warned that continued heavy rain could hamper the search for survivors. 

“People left everything behind when they fled for their lives,” the IFRC’s Philippines operations and programmes manager Patrick Elliott said in a statement. 

Footage shows vast tracks of land on the island is now under brown water, often waste deep as local try to flee to safer ground. 

Local police said 135 people were killed and 72 were missing in the northern section of Mindanao, while 47 were dead and 72 missing in the impoverished Zamboanga peninsula on its western side.  Another 18 people perished in the province of Lanao del Sur in the centre of the island. 

Village erased

One of the places hit hardest by the storm was the mountain village of Dalama, which was virtually erased from the map.  Footage filmed by Filipino television network ABS-CBN showed houses destroyed or engulfed by floodwaters there and rescuers retrieving the body of a dead girl buried in a landslide. 

Police, soldiers and volunteers used shovels and their bare hands to dig through mud and debris in their search for survivors. 

“The flood was already close and the people were not able to get out from their homes,” Armando Sangcopan, an elderly male survivor, told the station.  Rescuers said a total of 103 houses were carried off by rampaging floodwaters in Dalama. 

The storm approached the western island of Palawan, a popular tourist draw, late Saturday and swept into the South China Sea before dawn, the state weather service said. 

“So far zero casualties, but we have accounts of some people missing,” Palawan civil defence chief Zaldy Ablana told DZMM radio in an interview on Sunday. 

But in a Palawan fishing village, a 53-year-old man was killed by a crocodile while securing his boat in a river. 

Tembin struck less than a week after Tropical Storm Kai-Tak left scores dead and more than 20 missing in the central Philippines, straining the disaster-prone nation’s already stretched resources.  The deadliest typhoon to hit the country is still Haiyan, which killed thousands and destroyed entire towns in heavily populated areas of the central Philippines in November 2013

Source: AFP