Death toll from Mindanao landslides, floods up to 22

Residents ride a wooden boat as they paddle past submerged houses due to flooding brought about by heavy rains in the outskirts of Butuan City, Agusan del Sur on January 13, 2014. Twenty-two people have been killed and nearly 200,000 others evacuated from floods and landslides that hit a southern Philippine region still recovering from a deadly 2012 typhoon, the government said January 14. AFP PHOTO/Erwin Mascarinas

MANILA, Philippines — Twenty-two people have been killed and nearly 200,000 others evacuated as floods and landslides hit an area in Mindanao still recovering from a deadly 2012 typhoon, the government said Tuesday.

Torrential rain struck the eastern section of Mindanao island at the weekend, unleashing a fresh round of misery for survivors of Typhoon Bopha, civil defense officials said.

“Major rivers overflowed, causing people to drown in areas still recovering from Typhoon Pablo,” local civil defense operations officer Franz Irag told AFP, using the local designation for Typhoon Bopha, which struck the region in December 2012.

“Many of the victims had not managed to rebuild and were staying in temporary shelters when they were hit by fresh flooding,” Irag said.

Weekend floods and landslides killed eight people in Davao Oriental province and five in Compostela Valley, Irag said.

Additionally, six were buried in a landslide on the small southern island of Dinagat while three other people drowned in nearby areas, John Lenwayan, a civil defense official for the region, told AFP by telephone.

The bad weather left 160 houses damaged and also forced more than 194,000 people to flee their homes, Irag and Lenwayan said.

The two officials said the rains started abating on Monday and some of those who took refuge in government-run shelters were returning to their homes.

The weather bureau earlier said that the rains will likely go until Wednesday. It has so far showed no signs of intensifying into a tropical depression though.

Moderate to occasionally heavy rains are forecast over Mindanao, Bicol and Eastern Visayas.

The Mindanao floods occurred amid an international rehabilitation effort for areas destroyed by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (Haiyan) in November last year.

Yolanda left at least 7,986 people dead or missing across the central Philippines, according to a running government tally. Bodies are still being recovered from under the rubble.

An average of 20 typhoons and storms kill hundreds of people across the Philippines every year, but the last three years have been exceptional in the ferocity of some of these disasters.

Pablo, which struck the region in December 2012, left 1,900 people dead or missing on Mindanao by government count.

Tropical Storm “Sendong” (Washi) also unleashed floods that killed 1,080 people in December 2011. With a report from Frances Mangosing, INQUIRER.net

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