(Manila) The results of the typhoon Man-yi that hit the Philippines this weekend has reached 12 deaths, the national disaster agency announced Thursday, after the widespread flooding caused by the storm subsided.
Posted at 6:34 a.m.
An initial report on Monday reported eight deaths after the passage of Man-yi which submerged villages and destroyed fragile buildings in the archipelago over the weekend, with winds of up to 185 kilometers per hour.
It is the sixth major tropical storm to hit the Philippines in a month.
In total, these storms killed at least 175 people and displaced thousands more, while wiping out crops and livestock.
Most victims of Man-yi were in mountainous areas north of the capital Manila.
Seven people were notably killed in a landslide which buried their house in the province of Nueva Vizcaya.
A rock crushed another house, burying three people alive, in the coastal town of Dipaculao, where Man-yi made landfall a second time, Ariel Nepomuceno, an official with the civil defense office, told AFP.
Four people are still missing, he added.
“We are now in the reconstruction period, people have started to repair their houses,” Mr. Nepomuceno said.
“Construction materials have arrived in the most affected provinces.” In the northern city of Tuguegarao, floodwaters caused by the release of a dam and the swelling of the Cagayan River have begun to recede, after submerging thousands of homes in the days following the typhoon .
“The water level has dropped and is now only 0.3 meters high. Some evacuees have also returned home,” Ian Valdepenas, the city’s disaster manager, told AFP on Thursday.
Schools and administrations have reopened.
Every year, around 20 powerful storms and deadly typhoons strike the Philippines or its surrounding waters, but it is rare for several such events to occur in such a short time frame and this late in the year.
