MANILA (Reuters) – Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr on Tuesday conducted an aerial inspection over a southern province hit by landslides triggered by tropical storm Nalgae that killed 110 people.
More than 100 people were injured and 33 were still missing as a result of widespread flooding and multiple landslides, the disaster agency said.
Nalgae is headed for southern China after damaging $22 million worth of farm goods and $13 million worth of infrastructure, government data showed. It is the second-most destructive storm to hit the Philippines so far this year, after tropical storm Megi killed 214 people in April.
Marcos on Tuesday ordered officials to distribute relief packs faster and called for better preparation ahead of four more tropical storms forecast by the weather agency before the end of the year.
“When we were doing aerial inspection, I noticed that landslides occurred in denuded mountains and that was the problem,” said Marcos, who also visited an evacuation centre in Maguindanao province.
Most of the casualties from Nalgae, the country’s 14th cyclone this year, were in the southern autonomous region of Bangsamoro because of rain-induced landslides in deforested areas.
The Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,600 islands, sees an average 20 typhoons a year, with frequent landslides and floods blamed on the growing intensity of tropical cyclones due to climate change.
(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor)
