Ketsana wreaks havoc across Southeast Asia

The Jakarta Post, Manila | Wed, 09/30/2009 2:15 PM

One of the most destructive storms in years extended its deadly path across Southeast Asia, blowing down wooden villages in Cambodia and crushing Vietnamese houses under mudslides after submerging much of the Philippines capital. The death toll Wednesday was at 298 and rising.

Rescuers from the Philippine Navy carry a victim of flash floods caused by Typhoon Ondoy at Provident Village in Marikina City, Metro Manila September 27, 2009. (REUTERS/Cheryl Ravelo)

"We're used to storms that sweep away one or two houses. But I've never seen a storm this strong," said Nam Tum, governor of Cambodia's Kampong Thom province. The immediate threat was easing as Typhoon Ketsana was downgraded to a tropical depression as it crossed Wednesday into a fourth nation, Laos. But its powerful winds and pummeling rain left a snaking trail of destruction.

Landslides triggered by the storm slammed into houses in central Vietnam on Tuesday, burying at least seven people including five members of the same family, the government said.

They were among 41 people killed in the country, some by falling trees, with 10 missing. The storm destroyed or damaged nearly 170,000 homes and flattened crops across six central Vietnamese provinces, officials said. More than 350,000 people were evacuated from the typhoon's path, posing a logistical headache to shelter and feed them.

Parts of one hard-hit province, Quang Nam, were still isolated by floodwaters and its main highway remained partially submerged, provincial disaster official Nguyen Hoai Phuong said. In neighboring Cambodia, at least 11 people were killed and 29 injured Tuesday evening as the storm toppled dozens of rickety houses in Kampong Thom province, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of the capital, Phnom Penh. Five members of the same family died when the storm toppled their home as they ate dinner, said Neth Sophana of the Red Cross. Others were swept away by floodwaters.

Neth Sophana said about 90 homes were destroyed. Authorities were searching for more victims and rushing food, medical supplies and plastic sheeting for temporary tents to storm-hit aras. Light rain was falling over some parts of the disaster zone Wednesday, and most rivers had peaked Wednesday morning and were starting to slowly recede, Vietnam's National Weather Forecast Center said. But the cleanup task was enormous.

In the Philippines, Ketsana on Saturday triggered the wors flooding in 40 years across a swath of the island nation's north and submerged riverside districts of the sprawling capital of 12 million people. Officials said 2.3 million people had their homes swamped, and 400,000 were seeking help in relief centers hastily set up in schools and other public buildings- even the presidential palace.

The Philippines death toll stood at 246, with 42 people missing. Frustration boiled over at some sites. Flood victims rushed at an army helicopter delivering boxes of clothes to a relief center in Rodriguez town in hard-hit Rizal province just east of the capital, an Assciated Press photographer at the scene said.

No one was apparently injured, and the scene returned to calm after the helicopter dropped off its goods. Elsewhere in Rizal, police said they were investigating reports that flood victims mobbed two convoys carrying relief supplies and pelting thetrucks with stones. "Apparently victims who were hoping to receive the relief goods blocked the convoy," police official Leopoldo Bataoil told The Associated Press, adding that the report was unconfirmed.

Another tropical storm was headed toward the southern Philippines and could hit on Wednesday aftrnoon, government forecaster Malou Rivera said. Officials fear more heavy rain could flood already hard-hit areas and complicate cleanup efforts.

At relief centers Wednesday, women and children clutching bags of belongings lined up for bottled water, boiled eggs and packets of instant noodles for a fourth ay. Their husbands waded through sludge to return to their homes to clean up the mud - sometimes two feet (half a meter) deep - that carpeted their houses and shops.

Thick, gooey mud lay in some streets, while others were still under a foot or two (half a meter) of water. Mountains of garbage piled up. Neighborhoods rich and poor along the rivers that thread through the greater Manila area were hard hit, but the main downtown business and tourist district was largely unscathed and workers went back and forth as normal.

The city's notorious traffic jams appeared marginally worse as drivers avoided flood-hit aeas. In Marikina, a suburban district of the capital, police used forklifts to remove mud-caked cars stalled along the road.

Elsewhere, people used shovels and brooms to muck brown mud from their homes and businesses, some of them inundated up to the second floor. The government has declared a "state of calamity" in Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces and estimated the damage at $100 million.

It concedes its ability to cope with the disaster is stretched to the limit and has appealed for foreign aid, and accepted pledges from the United States, Australia, Japan and other nations.

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