Typhoon death toll hits 23 in Philippines

September 28, 2011 03:06 pm | Updated November 17, 2021 12:41 am IST - Manila

Debris litter the scenic Roxas Boulevard near a seawall in Manila, after Typhoon Nesat battered the capital and other parts of northeastern Philippines on Tuesday.

Debris litter the scenic Roxas Boulevard near a seawall in Manila, after Typhoon Nesat battered the capital and other parts of northeastern Philippines on Tuesday.

The death toll in Typhoon Nesat’s onslaught in the Philippines rose to 23 on Wednesday, as the country began to clean up the destruction left behind by the powerful cyclone.

Thirty-five people, most of them fishermen, were missing, the Office of Civil Defence said.

Most of the fatalities were caused by uprooted trees, collapsing structures or flying debris, it added.

A 2-year-old girl and her grandmother were buried in a landslide in the northern province of Ifugao on Tuesday.

Government and private offices reopened, but many school classes remained suspended, and the U.S. embassy in Manila was closed after its seaside compound was flooded on Tuesday.

Nesat slammed into the north-eastern Philippines on Tuesday with maximum sustained winds of 140 kilometres per hour (kph) and gusts of up to 170 kph.

With a diameter of 600 kilometres, the typhoon’s effect was felt in the entire northern region of Luzon and some parts of the eastern region of Bicol.

The weather bureau said Nesat weakened to maximum sustained winds of 120 kph and gusts of up to 150 kph, as it crossed the mountains of Luzon late on Tuesday.

But the bureau said on Wednesday that the storm had regained its strength, with maximum sustained winds of up to 130 kph and gusts of up to 160 as it headed toward China.

Nearly 53,000 people were forced to flee their homes as the typhoon’s heavy rains triggered floods and landslides, the OCD said.

Winds tore off roofs, toppled electricity and communication poles, uprooted trees and damaged houses and other structures.

In Manila, teams from the public works department began to clear roads of debris and fallen trees. Cars submerged in Tuesday’s floods were towed away.

Local government officials ordered the immediate repair of collapsed portions of the Manila Bay seawall, which had worsened the flooding in the capital.

Many towns in the northern Philippines were isolated by landslides that closed roads to traffic. Electricity and communication lines also remained down.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.