Channel News Asia, AFP, 06
December 2012
 |
| Survivors being transported across a river in Compostela province after Typhoon Bopha left the Philippines. (AFP/Ted Aljibe) |
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NEW BATAAN,
Philippines: Nearly 200,000 people were homeless and 475 confirmed dead after
the Philippines' worst typhoon this year, officials said Thursday, as the
government appealed for international help.
Typhoon
Bopha ploughed across Mindanao island on Tuesday, flattening whole towns in its
path as hurricane-force winds brought torrential rain that triggered a deadly
combination of floods and landslides.
Erinea
Cantilla and her family of six walked barefoot for two days in a vain search of
food and shelter through a muddy wasteland near the mountainous town of New
Bataan after the deluge destroyed their house and banana and cocoa farm.
"Everything
we had is gone. The only ones left are dead people," Cantilla told AFP as
her husband, three children and a granddaughter reached the outskirts of the
town, which itself had been nearly totally obliterated.
The army
said it was looking for at least 377 missing people while seeking help for more
than 179,000 others who sheltered in schools, gyms and other buildings after
losing everything.
Officials
said many victims were poor migrants who flocked to landslide-prone sites like
New Bataan and the nearby town of Monkayo to farm the lower slopes of mountains
or work at unregulated mines in the gold rush area.
Of the
dead, 258 were found on the east coast of Mindanao while 191 were recovered in
and around New Bataan and Monkayo, said Major-General Ariel Bernardo, head of
an army division involved in the search.
The civil
defence office in Manila said 17 people were killed elsewhere in Mindanao along
with nine in the central Visayan islands.
"We
still have more than 377 missing and our challenge now is really to try to get
to them," he told AFP.
Shell-shocked
survivors scrabbled through the rubble of their homes to find anything that
could be recovered, as relatives searched for missing family members among
mud-caked bodies laid out in rows on tarpaulins.
Civil
defence chief Benito Ramos refused to give up hope for the missing.
"There
is no time limit -- as long as it takes," he told reporters when asked how
long the search and rescue effort would take.
One man was
rescued after being trapped for two days under rocks and debris after flash
floods swept away his entire family.
Covered in
mud and teary-eyed, Carlos Agang recounted how a small community of banana and
coconut farmers was devastated as Bopha unleashed a wall of water.
"It's
a miracle that I survived, but I might as well be dead," he said.
President
Benigno Aquino has sent food and other supplies by ship to 150,000 people on
Mindanao's east coast where three towns remain cut off by landslides and
wrecked bridges, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said.
Social
Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said the government had sought help from the
Swiss-based International Organisation for Migration to build temporary
shelters to ease the pressure on evacuation camps.
"The
priority is to build bunkhouses so that there will be shelter for them,"
she said on ABS-CBN television.
The United
States and Japan said they had offered emergency assistance.
Geologist
Mahar Lagmay, head of a government project to map out all flood-prone areas of
the country, said that while most people in the affected communities were aware
of the danger, they did not know where to go for safety.
"Year
after year, whenever there is heavy rain that comes to that place, there are
landslides and many people die in those mountainous areas," he said.
Workers
were struggling to reach villages due to destroyed roads and wrecked bridges,
but finding corpses was not a problem due to the overpowering stench
everywhere, said Francisco Macalipay, a soldier involved in the rescue.
"Just
let your nose lead you to them," he told AFP.
"In a
week's time I'm sure the smell of death would force the survivors to flee the
town."
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