Flash floods and landslides triggered by Typhoon Fengshen left at least 19 people dead in the Philippines, while an overflowing dam stranded tens of thousands on rooftops, officials said yesterday.
At least 30,000 people living in Iloilo in the central Philippines had scrambled onto rooftops fleeing the rushing water after the man-made dam overflowed, acting mayor Jed Mabilog said.
“I have received a lot of text messages appealing for helicopters, there are many people trapped on the rooftops,” Iloilo congressman Serg Biron told DZBB radio. “This is the worst flooding that has hit Iloilo in history.”
Fengshen, upgraded from a tropical storm on Friday, swept through the country’s center over the weekend, unleashing torrential rains, causing power outages and forcing the evacuations of hundreds of thousands of people.
Officials said earlier that flash floods and landslides triggered by the typhoon had left at least 19 people dead.
In the urban centers of Jaro and Iloilo, residents waded through waist-high waters that made roads impassable to vehicles.
The National Power Corporation shut down its power plant in the area, triggering a blackout across the province, plant manager Nelson Hemona said.
Roads connecting the southern cities of Cotabato and General Santos on Mindanao were flooded, while a concrete bridge also collapsed, isolating some villages and towns, Catholic-run radio station DXMS reported.
The storm forced more than 200,000 people to seek temporary shelter in the eastern Bicol region, the civil defense office said.
Heavy rains battered the Bicol region overnight and more than 600 people were stranded in various seaports there.
At 5pm, Fengshen was tracking northwest, packing winds of 195kph as it headed toward Mindoro Province.
It was forecast to dump heavy rain over large swathes of the central Visayas region and parts of the main island of Luzon through today, the weather bureau said.
The Central Weather Bureau said yesterday that whether Typhoon Fengshen would hit Taiwan would become clearer in the next couple of days.
The bureau said it would continue to monitor the movement of the typhoon before deciding whether to issue a typhoon alert.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
RSS