At least 76 people have been killed in central and northern Philippines after Tropical Storm Trami hit the country, causing landslides and floods that trapped residents on their roofs and displaced some 320,000 people. As the storm moves out of the country on Friday on a path of destruction, state meteorologists are raising the rare possibility that it will return next week as it is pushed by high-pressure winds developing in the South China Sea.
A Philippine provincial police chief said on Friday that 47 people were killed, mostly by landslides caused by Trami in Batangas province, south of the capital, Manila. Seventeen other villagers are still missing in Batangas, Col. Jacinto Malinao Jr. said. Although Trami did not strengthen into a typhoon, it dumped extremely heavy rains in some areas, some of which received one to two months of rain in just 24 hours, inundating communities with floods.
More than 2.6 million people were affected by the flood, and nearly 320,000 of them fled to evacuation centers or to the homes of relatives, disaster mitigation officials said.
As of Friday, 7,510 passengers were still stuck at ports and 36 flights were canceled.In the Bicol region of the central Philippines, 29 people died in floods and landslides, according to the Philippine National Police. At least 11 of the victims died of drowning. Nine other people were reported injured and four missing.
At the foot of the Mayon volcano in Albay province, mud and other debris poured into nearby towns as the storm hit, engulfing homes and cars in black mudslides.The storm was last spotted on Friday afternoon, blowing 410 km west of the northwestern Philippines with sustained winds of up to 95 km/h and gusts of up to 115 km/h.
It was moving northwest toward Vietnam. Every year, about 20 storms and typhoons hit the Philippines, a Southeast Asian archipelago located between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.In September, at least 11 people were killed when Tropical Storm Yagi hit the country.
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