Motorists ride past a part of a roof suspended on electric wires blown by strong winds caused by Typhoon Man-yi along a street in the municipality of Baler, Aurora province, northeastern Philippines on Nov 18, 2024. - AP
MANILA: The death toll from Super Typhoon Man-yi in the Philippines has risen to 12, the national disaster agency said on Thursday (Nov 21) as widespread flooding subsided.
Man-yi submerged villages and smashed flimsy buildings in the archipelago nation over the weekend, packing maximum sustained wind speeds of 185km (115 miles) an hour.
It was the sixth major storm in a month to strike the Philippines.
Together they have killed at least 175 people and displaced thousands, as well as wiping out crops and livestock
Most of the Man-yi deaths were in mountainous areas north of the capital Manila, including seven people killed after a landslide buried their house in Nueva Vizcaya province.
A boulder also crushed a house, burying three people alive, in the coastal town of Dipaculao, where Man-yi had made a second landfall, Ariel Nepomuceno, a senior official with the government's civil defence office, told AFP.
Four people remain missing, he added.
"We are now in the recovery period, people have started to fix their houses," Nepomuceno said.
"Construction materials have been arriving in hard-hit provinces."
In the northern city of Tuguegarao, floodwaters induced by a dam release and a swollen Cagayan River have started to subside, after swamping thousands of houses in the days after the typhoon exited the country.
"The water level has subsided and is now just one foot (0.3 metres) high. Some evacuees have also gone back to their homes," city disaster official Ian Valdepenas told AFP on Thursday.
Schools and government offices have reopened.
About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the Southeast Asian nation or its surrounding waters each year, killing scores of people, but it is rare for multiple such weather events to take place in a small window. - AFP
