| Death toll in Manila flood rises to 60 |
APALIT Thousands more Philippine flood victims crammed into evacuation centres on Friday as waist-high water covered vast farming regions and the death toll from a week of misery rose to 60.
The flooding that submerged 80 per cent of Manila early in the week has largely subsided, allowing people to return to their homes, but vital rice-growing areas to the north remained under water as more rain fell there.
“We need something to eat. I haven’t gone to work or been paid for a week,” said Rogelio Soco, a construction worker and father-of-three in the small farming town of Apalit, 60km from Manila.
Around Apalit, formerly green rice paddies had been turned into an enormous inland ocean of brown water. Rice farmer Pablo Torres, 58, said his two-hectare field planted last month had likely been destroyed, and dozens of people in his community had suffered the same fate.
Nearly two weeks of monsoon rains across the Philippines’ main island of Luzon peaked with a 48-hour deluge earlier this week that battered Manila and surrounding regions.
International charity group Save the Children warned that a lack of toilets and clean water in evacuation centres could lead to outbreaks of disease.
Agence France-Presse
|
 |
|
|
| NEWS UPDATES |
|
|
|
|
|
|
