No entry: Vehicles piled up after flooding caused by Typhoon Kalmaegi in Cebu city. — AP
A Philippine air force helicopter with five personnel on board crashed in the country’s south while flying to help respond to the devastation wrought by Typhoon Kalmaegi, which has already left at least 26 people dead and set off widespread flooding that trapped residents on roofs in some central villages.
The Super Huey chopper crashed near Loreto town in southern Agusan del Sur province and efforts were underway to locate the air force personnel aboard who were deployed to help provide humanitarian assistance to provinces affected by the typhoon, the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command said in a statement.
Military officials didn’t immediately provide other details about the crash, including the condition of the five air force personnel aboard and what could have caused the crash.
Kalmaegi was last spotted over the coastal waters of Jordan town in the central province of Guimaras with sustained winds of 130kph and gusts of up to 180kph.
It was forecast to blow away into the South China Sea late yesterday or early today after hitting the western province of Palawan.
An older villager drowned in floodwaters in Southern Leyte, where a province-wide power outage was also reported, and another person died after being hit by a fallen tree in central Bohol province, officials said.
In Cebu alone, 21 people were confirmed dead, civil defence deputy administrator Rafaelito Alejandro said by phone, giving the storm’s current death toll as 26.
“Based on information that we have, most of them died from drowning,” he said.
Gwendolyn Pang, secretary-general of the Philippine Red Cross, said that an unspecified number of residents were trapped on their roofs by floodwaters in the coastal town of Liloan in Cebu, and added that cars either were submerged in floods or floated in another Cebu community.
“We have received so many calls from people asking us to rescue them from roofs and from their houses, but it’s impossible,” Pang said yesterday.
“There is so much debris; you see cars floating, so we have to wait for the flood to subside.”
Cebu province was still recovering from a 6.9 magnitude earthquake on Sept 30 that left at least 79 people dead and displaced thousands when houses collapsed or were severely damaged.
In Eastern Samar, one of the east-central provinces first lashed by Kalmaegi early yesterday, fierce wind either ripped off roofs or damaged about 300 mostly rural shanties on the island community of Homonhon, which is part of the town of Guiuan, but there were no reported deaths or injuries, Mayor Annaliza Gonzales Kwan said.
“There was no flooding at all, but just strong wind,” Kwan said by telephone.
“We’re OK. We’ll make it through. We’ve been through a lot, and bigger than this.”
In November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones on record, slammed ashore in Guiuan. It then raked across the central Philippines, leaving more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattening entire villages and sweeping scores of ships inland.
Haiyan demolished about a million houses and displaced more than four million people in one of the country’s poorest regions.
Before the typhoon’s landfall, disaster-response officials said that more than 387,000 people had evacuated to safer ground in eastern and central Philippine provinces.
Authorities warned of torrential rains, potentially destructive winds and storm surges of up to three metres.
Inter-island ferries and fishing boats were prohibited from venturing into increasingly rough seas, stranding more than 3,500 passengers and cargo truck drivers in nearly 100 seaports, the coast guard said. At least 186 domestic flights were cancelled.
The Philippines is hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year, routinely striking disaster-prone areas where millions live in poverty.
With Kalmaegi, the archipelagic country has already reached that average, state weather specialist Charmagne Varilla said, adding at least “three to five more” storms could be expected by December’s end.
The Philippines was hit by two major storms in September, including Super Typhoon Ragasa, which tore the roofs off buildings on its way to killing 14 people in nearby Taiwan. — Agencies
