Death toll in Philippine floods rises to 436

[jaxx]

Death toll in Philippine floods rises to 436
Dec 17, 12:27 PM (ET)
By OLIVER TEVES

MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Pounding rain from a tropical storm swelled rivers and sent walls of water crushing into two southern Philippine cities in the thick of night, killing at least 436 people, many caught in their beds, officials said Saturday.

Philippine Red Cross Secretary General Gwen Pang told The Associated Press that the latest toll was based on a body count in funeral parlors. She said that 215 died in Cagayan de Oro and 144 in nearby Iligan, and the rest in several other southern and central provinces.

Most of the dead were asleep Friday night when raging floodwaters tore through their homes from swollen rivers and cascaded from mountain slopes following 12 hours of pounding rain in the southern Mindanao region. The region is unaccustomed to the typhoons that are common elsewhere in the archipelago nation.

<..> Chief of the government's Civil Defense Office Benito Ramos attributed the high casualties in Mindanao "partly to the complacency of people because they are not in the usual path of storms" despite four days of warnings by officials that one was approaching.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/2011121...D2400.html

How awful. This year has got to be the worst ever for natural disasters.

[azmouse]

They can be glad they don't have our Republican party to deal with or there would be no assistance until the costs were off-set with cuts elsewhere.

[jaxx]

You said it azmouse. The GOP want to gut the EPA and deny global warming....I'd say they are complicit in the disasters due to their denial.

[jaxx]

With morgues full, mass burial held for Philippine flood victims
Nearly 700 people die in flash floods, landslides; 'We lost count of how many are missing,' official says

updated 12/19/2011 7:54:58 AM ET

ILIGAN, Philippines — With funeral parlors overwhelmed, authorities in a flood-stricken southern Philippine city on Monday organized the first mass burial of some of nearly 700 people who were swept to their deaths in one of worst calamities to strike the region in decades.

For the first time in a day, the staggering death toll from Friday night's disaster, spawned by a tropical storm, remained little changed but the number of missing varied widely. Official figures put the missing at 82, while the Philippine Red Cross estimated 800.

<..> "Definitely, we are not burying them in mass graves. That is not allowed any more," Levi Villarin, city health officer, told Reuters.

However, in Cagayan de Oro, further east along Mindanao's north coast, officials moved hundreds of unclaimed bodies to a sanitary landfill for a mass burial after residents complained of the stench.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45721519/ns/weather/

This is a terrible disaster. Very sad.

[Treestar]

Very tragic. Odd about the funeral parlors. Hadn't thought of that as to Japan, say.