Storm Kalmaegi has left at least 85 people dead with 75 others missing in the central Philippines, mostly in widespread flooding that trapped people on their roofs and swept away scores of cars in a hard-hit province still recovering from a deadly earthquake, officials said on Wednesday.
Six people were killed in a separate incident when a Philippine air force helicopter crashed in the southern province of Agusan del Sur on Tuesday while en route to help provide humanitarian help to provinces battered by Kalmaegi, the military said without providing other details, including what could have caused the crash. Kalmaegi was last spotted early Wednesday over the coastal waters of Linapacan in the western island province of Palawan with sustained winds of 120 kph and gusts of up to 150 kph. It was forecast to blow away into the South China Sea later on Wednesday.
Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV, deputy administrator of the Office of Civil Defence, and provincial officials said most of the deaths were reported in the central province of Cebu, which was pummeled by Kalmaegi on Tuesday, setting off flash floods and causing a river and other waterways to swell. The resulting flooding engulfed residential communities, forcing startled residents to climb up to their roofs, where they desperately pleaded to be rescued as the floodwaters rose, officials said.
The Philippine Red Cross received many calls from people needing rescue from their roofs, its secretary-general Gwendolyn Pang said Tuesday, adding the efforts had to wait until flooding subsided to lessen the risks for emergency personnel. “We did everything we could for the typhoon, but, you know, there are really some unexpected things like flash floods,” Cebu Governor Pamela Baricuatro told The Associated Press
by telephone. Torrential rains sparked by the typhoon may have been worsened by years of quarrying that caused heavy siltation of nearby rivers, which overflowed, and substandard flood control projects in Cebu province, Baricuatro said. A corruption scandal involving substandard or non-existent flood control projects across the Philippines has sparked public outrage and street protests in recent months. “There has to be an investigation of the flood control projects here in Cebu and people should be held accountable,” Baricuatro said. Cebu, a bustling province of more than 2.4 million people.
