Floods and landslides killed 11 people after a fierce tropical storm dumped heavy rain on the Philippines for a second day, officials said yesterday.
Tropical Storm Yagi brushed past the Bicol region southeast of Manila overnight on Sunday and was expected to make a landfall later yesterday on the northeast coast of the main island of Luzon.
As a precaution, schools and government offices across the capital, Manila, were shut for the day, while ferry services in affected areas were suspended and 29 domestic flights canceled due to the weather.
Photo: AP
Three people, including a pregnant woman, were killed in a landslide yesterday in Antipolo, near the equally rain-soaked capital, city information officer Relly Bonifacio said.
He said the bodies of four other people, all drowning victims, were recovered yesterday in three other areas of the hilly community, hours after creeks overflowed overnight.
The Bicol city of Naga was also hard-hit, with a man electrocuted as floodwaters rose and a baby girl drowning, rescuers said.
“The floods were above head height in some areas,” Joshua Tuazon of the city’s public safety office said, adding that hundreds of residents had been rescued.
More than 300 people remained at evacuation camps yesterday, with local officials saying the floodwaters in the city of 210,000 people were slow to ebb.
Two landslides killed two people and damaged five houses in the central city of Cebu on Sunday, the local disaster office there said.
Yagi tore northward off the coast of Luzon yesterday afternoon, with sustained winds of 85kph, up from 75kph an hour earlier in the day, the state weather service said in an updated bulletin.
It was due to make landfall in the northern province of Isabela later in the day, with four towns and about 33,000 people in its path.
Local officials were advised to prepare communities to evacuate flood-prone areas, provincial disaster chief Constante Foronda said.
The weather service also warned of a “minimal to moderate risk” of huge coastal waves threatening communities as the storm hits land.
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