Kuwait Times

Published Date: September 27, 2009

MANILA: Nearly 60 people were killed, Manila was blacked out and airline flights were suspended as a powerful typhoon battered the main Philippines island of Luzon yesterday, disaster officials said. Television showed houses swept away by swollen rivers, people on rooftops waving for help and throngs stranded along Manila's submerged main thoroughfares as the storm packing winds of 100 kph dumped 341 mm of rain in six hours.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo appealed for donations of clothes, blankets, food and water as hundreds of families, perched on rooftops or were trapped in submerged areas, waiting for rescue. "I am calling on our countrymen, especially residents of metro Manila and other provinces in the path of the typhoon, to please stay calm, follow the instructions of local officials and civil defence authorities," Arroyo said in a televised message.

At least 47 people were killed, mostly by drowning, in Rizal province, east of Manila, radio reports quoted the local governor as saying. Eleven more people were killed by collapsing walls and rising floodwaters in the capital area, disaster officials said. Authorities shut down operations at international and domestic airports, stranding thousands of passengers.

An advisory said operations would not resume until today. Disaster officials declared a "state of calamity" for the capital region and 25 other areas on the main island of Luzon, in order to speed up rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts. Businesses and commercial shops closed early and local hotels were packed by weary commuters.

The mayor of Cainta, also in Rizal, who was stranded atop a dump truck on a road that was neck-deep in water, told ABS-CBN television by phone that many residents climbed onto roofs to escape. "The whole town is almost 100 percent underwater," Mayor Mon Ilagan said.

ABS-CBN television showed a dramatic video of more than a dozen people perched on roofs of damaged houses being swept away by the suburban Marikina River. They smashed against the pillars of a bridge and were separated from each other in the rampaging river. It was unclear whether they were rescued.

By the evening, the storm maintained its strength as it moved over the coast of western Zambales province and headed west toward the South China Sea. Stranded residents called radio and television stations for help. Popular actress Cristine Reyes tearfully appealed on ABS-CBN television from the roof of her two-storey home, saying she and her mother and two young children had been waiting there for rescue for over six hours. "If the rains do not stop, the water will reach the roof. We do not know what t
o do. My mother doesn't know how to swim," she said.

Manila airport operations chief Octavio Lina said the runway had been flooded, delaying international flights for hours. Floodwaters also caused some electrical outages. Hundreds of vehicles were stalled in flooded streets around the capital, and nearly 2,000 passengers were stranded in ports in several provinces south of Manila after the coast guard suspended ferry operations. The rains also caused the water in two dams near Manila to overflow, the national disaster agency said. It said water was waist-
deep in some communities in northern Bulacan province near one dam. Power distributor Meralco cut off electric service to some flooded areas in metropolitan Manila to prevent accidents, spokesman Joel Zaldarriaga said.

The typhoon was moving west-northwest and was expected to head towards the South China Sea by today evening or tomorrow morning, chief weather forecaster Nathaniel Cruz told a local radio station. He said the typhoon brought the heaviest rainfall in the country since 1967 after its weather station collected 341 mm of rainfall in six hours yesterday. An average of about 20 typhoons strike the Southeast Asian nation every year. "However good your drainage system is, it will be overwhelmed by that amount of r
ainfall," he told AP. He said poor maintenance of drains and waterways clogged with garbage compounded the problem. -- Agencies