375 dead, 56 missing after typhoon slams Philippines

| | Manila
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375 dead, 56 missing after typhoon slams Philippines

Tuesday, 21 December 2021 | AP | Manila

The death toll from the strongest typhoon  to batter the Philippines this year climbed to 375, with more than  50 others still missing and several central provinces struggling  with downed communications and power outages and pleading for food  and water, officials said Monday.

At its strongest, Typhoon Rai packed sustained winds of 195 kilometers  (121 miles) per hour with gusts of up to 270 kph (168 mph) before  blowing out into the South China Sea on Friday.

At least 375 people were killed, 56 were missing and 500 were injured,  according to the national police. The toll may still increase because  several towns and villages remained out of reach due to downed communications and power outages, although massive cleanup and repair efforts were underway. Many were killed by falling trees and collapsing walls, flash floods and landslides. A 57-year-old man was found dead hanging from a tree branch and a woman was blown away and died in Negros Occidental province,  police said.

Governor Arlene Bag-ao of Dinagat Islands, among the southeastern  provinces first hit by the typhoon, said Rai's ferocity on her island province of more than 130,000 people was worse than that of Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful and deadliest typhoons on record which devastated the central Philippines in November 2013 but did  not inflict any casualties in Dinagat. "If it was like being in a washing machine before, this time there  was like a huge monster that smashed itself everywhere, grabbed anything

like trees and tin roofs and then hurled them everywhere," Bag-ao said by telephone. "The wind was swirling north to south to east  and west repeatedly for six hours. Some tin roof sheets were blown away and then were tossed back." At least 14 villagers died and

more than 100 others were injured by flying roofs, debris and glass shards and were treated in makeshift surgery rooms in damaged hospitals  in Dinagat, Bag-ao said.

Many more would have died if thousands of  residents had not been evacuated from high-risk villages. Dinagat and several other typhoon-hit provinces remained without  electricity and communications and many residents needed construction  materials, food and water. Bag-ao and other provincial officials  traveled to nearby regions that had cellphone signals to seek aid  and coordinate recovery efforts with the national government.

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