Tropical storm adds to Philippines' weather toll with 25 dead and 278,000 evacuated this week

San Francisco Chronicle​

3 days ago

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A tropical storm was blowing across the Philippines' mountainous north Friday, worsening more than a week of bad weather that has caused at least 25 deaths and prompted evacuations in villages hit by flooding and landslides.
The storm was Typhoon Co-may when it blew Thursday night into the town of Agno in Pangasinan province with maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers (74 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 165 kph (102 mph). It was weakening as it advanced northeastward and had sustained winds of 85 kph (53 mph) Friday afternoon.
Co-may was intensifying seasonal monsoon rains that had swamped a large swath of the country for more than a week.
Disaster-response officials have received reports of at least 25 deaths since last weekend, mostly due to flash floods, toppled trees, landslides and electrocution. Eight other people were reported missing, they said.
There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries directly caused by Co-may, locally called Emong, the fifth weather disturbance to hit the Philippines since the rainy season started in last month. More than a dozen more tropical storms were expected to batter the Southeast Asian country the rest of the year, forecasters said.
The government shut down schools in metropolitan Manila for the third day Friday and suspended classes in 35 provinces in the main northern region of Luzon. More than 80 towns and cities, mostly in Luzon, have declared a state of calamity, a designation that speeds emergency funds and freezes the prices of commodities, including rice.
The days of stormy weather have forced 278,000 people to leave their homes for safety in emergency shelters or relatives' homes. Nearly 3,000 houses have been damaged, the government's disaster response agency said.
Thousands of army forces, police, coast guard personnel. firefighters and civilian volunteers have been deployed to help rescue people in villages swamped in floodwaters or isolated due to roads blocked by landslides, fallen trees and boulders.
The United States said it will provide $250,000 in funding to the U.N. World Food Programme to help the Philippine government's response. 'We are tracking the devastation caused by the storms and floods and are deeply concerned for all those affected,' U.S. Ambassador MaryKay Carlson said.
After returning from his White House meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. visited emergency shelters Thursday in Rizal province to help distribute food packs to displaced residents. He later convened an emergency meeting with disaster-response officials, where he underscored the need for the government and the people to adapt to and brace for climate change and the larger number of and more unpredictable natural calamities it's setting off.
'Everything has changed,' Marcos said. 'Let's not say, `The storm may come, what will happen?' because the storm will really come.'
The United States, Manila's longtime treaty ally, has pledged to provide military aircraft to airlift food and other aid to remote island provinces and the countryside if the calamity worsens, the Philippines military said.
The Philippines, which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Seas, is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. It's often hit by earthquakes and has about two dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the world's most disaster-prone countries.