CEBU (Philippines): At least 26 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced as rains driven by Typhoon Kalmaegi flooded swathes of the central Philippines on Tuesday.
Entire towns on the island of Cebu have been inundated, while cars, trucks and even massive shipping containers could be seen swept along by muddy floodwaters in videos verified by AFP.
In Cebu alone, 21 people were now confirmed dead, civil defence deputy administrator Rafaelito Alejandro told AFP by phone, giving the storm’s current death toll as 26.
“Based on information that we have, most of them died from drowning,” he said.
In the 24 hours before Kalmaegi’s landfall, the area around provincial capital Cebu City was deluged with 183 millimetres (seven inches) of rain, well over its 131-millimetre monthly average, state weather specialist Charmagne Varilla told AFP.
“The situation in Cebu is really unprecedented,” provincial governor Pamela Baricuatro said in a Tuesday Facebook post.
“We were expecting the winds to be the dangerous part, but... the water is what’s truly putting our people at risk,” she said. “The floodwaters are just devastating.”
Local disaster official Ethel Minoza told AFP the bodies of two children had been recovered in Cebu City, where rescuers were still attempting to reach residents trapped by floodwaters.
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