MANILA: Philippine President Benigno Aquino surveyed flooded provinces north of the capital on Tuesday as the death toll from two powerful typhoons last week was raised to 76 and the damage to crops was estimated at 12 billion pesos ($275 million).
Aquino surveyed inundated villages in three provinces, talked to displaced families in temporary shelters and was briefed by officials and engineers on how to control flooding in future, including the dredging of heavily silted river systems and installation of flood sensors.
Wide areas of the rice-growing provinces of Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga and Tarlac provinces have been submerged since last week.
Typhoon Nesat and Nalgae killed 76 people, with 29 still missing, and displaced nearly 500,000, about half of whom are in temporary shelter areas, on the main island of Luzon, the national disaster agency said on Wednesday.
The agriculture department said the typhoons damaged about 760,000 tonnes of unmilled rice yet to be harvested, mostly from the central Luzon region, equal to two weeks of national consumption and more than 11 percent of the expected rice harvest in the fourth quarter.
The crop damage was estimated at 12 billion pesos, Antonio Fleta, deputy farm minister, told the president in a briefing.
Health officials are concerned over a lack of potable water, and how to dispose of garbage and human waste after cases of diarrhoea and other communicable diseases were reported.
Weather forecasters said two to three more cyclones are expected to enter the Philippines this month.
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