Toll Expected to Rise in Philippine Flooding~via NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/world/asia/29philip.html

	aron Favila/Associated Press Twitter Recommend A resident salvaged belongings in suburban Marikina, east of Manila, on Monday.

September 29, 2009

Toll Expected to Rise in Philippine Flooding

By CARLOS H. CONDE

MANILA — Thousands of Filipinos remained trapped in their homes Monday because of floodwaters from Tropical Storm Ketsana, which killed scores of people with many more fatalities expected to be reported.

As of 6 a.m. Monday, the National Disaster Coordinating Council put the death toll at 86. But officials of the provinces of Batangas and Rizal said this figure did not include at least 100 other fatalities. In Rizal province alone, officials said 82 residents had died.

The sun shone Monday morning and many Filipinos were happy that their lives were slowly inching back to normal as the floodwaters began to recede in some areas.

But in Pasig City, one of the hardest-hit Manila suburbs where the heavily silted and polluted Pasig River is located, the floodwater in many communities hardly decreased. "The water is not moving," a tearful Nene Monfort, 71,, told ABS-CBN television. She said she and her family, who have been holed up on the second floor of their apartment, could not come down because of the water.

The disaster was the worst the capital had experienced in nearly half a century. Ketsana poured a month's worth of rain onto Manila in just 12 hours, the government's weather bureau said.

Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, who also heads the National Disaster Coordinating Council, said in a briefing early this morning that the government's would now concentrate on relief work, indicating that a major part of the rescue effort was now over.

"Right now we will concentrate really on providing food and other necessities," he said, adding that Ketsana destroyed the homes of more than 435,000 residents in the capital and several provinces in the northern Philippines. More than 100,000 of those affected are now housed in roughly 200 evacuation centers.

The U.S. Defense Department's Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported Monday that the storm was expected to move westward and "intensify further to typhoon strength before it makes landfall" near the city of Hue, in central Vietnam.

The Philippine government has declared a "state of national calamity" in 27 provinces outside the capital.

The American embassy in Manila pledged at least $50,000 in disaster aid to the Philippines. It also dispatched several United States Navy personnel on rubber boats to Cainta City, one of the worst hit, to help in the distributing relief goods and rescue residents.

"The damage this storm has caused is heartbreaking," Rebecca Thompson, an embassy spokesman, said in a statement Sunday.

Apart from embassies, countless organizations here and abroad have started relief drives to gather material and financial support to the displaced.

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