HUNDREDS FEARED DEAD IN PHILIPPINES STORM
HUNDREDS FEARED DEAD
IN
PHILIPPINES STORM
The death toll from the powerful typhoon that killed more
than 100 people in the Philippines last weekend could rise sharply after a
ferry carrying more than 700 passengers and crew members capsized in the
central part of the island chain , officials said.The Red Cross reported that
at least 137 people had been killed in the hurricane, not including those
confirmed dead after the ferry sinking. Glenn Rabonza, executive director of
the National Disaster Coordinating Council, said casualty figures were
difficult to confirm because of extremely bad weather that was hampering search
and recovery operations.On Sunday, the coast guard said it had reached the spot
near the island of Sibuyan where the passenger ferry, the Princess of the
Stars, had capsized a day earlier.Officials said they found no survivors apart
from four passengers rescued earlier in the day.Officials said the bodies of
four passengers had also been recovered earlier in the day.
Nanette Tansingco, mayor of San Fernando, Sibuyan's
largest town, told DZMM radio on Sunday that witnesses had described "the
boat upside down with a big hole in the hull."She said island villagers
had reported seeing slippers and other belongings washing ashore, and other
witnesses offered similar accounts.One of the survivors, Jesus Gica, told a
radio station that he saw passengers losing consciousness and children unable
to wear their life vests. "Many of us jumped from the ship," he said.
"The waves were big."He also said elderly people, unable to escape,
had been trapped underneath the sunken ferry.Dozens of relatives of the
passengers went to the ferry company's office in Manila, demanding to know what
happened to their loved ones."I'm very worried," Felino Farionin told
The Associated Press. "I need to know what happened to my family." He
said his wife, son and in-laws were on the ferry.
According to the government, the ferry was carrying 702
passengers, 45 of them children and infants, and 121 crew members.The typhoon,
Fengshen, made landfall on Saturday and battered several provinces. Its wind
and rain knocked down power lines in the capital and elsewhere, caused
landslides and capsized small boats.Fengshen, its winds at more than 90 miles
per hour, caused more destruction in the northern Philippines but was headed
out of the country on Sunday afternoon, weather officials said.The bad weather
hampered efforts to locate the Princess of the Stars and its passengers, coast
guard officials said."They haven't seen anyone," Lieutenant Senior
Grade Arman Balilo, a spokesman for the coast guard, told The Associated Press.
"They're scouring the area. They're studying the direction of the waves to
determine where survivors may have drifted."Officials were checking
reports that some people reached a nearby island and that a raft was spotted
off another, said a coast guard spokesman, Commander Antonio Cuasito, The
Associated Press reported. "We can only pray that there are many survivors
so we can reduce the number of casualties," he said.President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo, who is in the United States for a state visit, scolded coast
guard officials during a teleconference on Sunday for allowing the ferry to
sail despite warnings about the typhoon. She ordered government agencies to
coordinate rescue and relief efforts.The coast guard said the Princess of the
Stars was allowed to leave Manila on Friday evening for Cebu, a city in the
central Philippines, because the storm had not yet made landfall.Coast guard
officials said the ferry should have been big enough to sail and that a warning
issued earlier on Saturday barred only small boats from traveling.In Iloilo
Province, in the central Philippines, the governor, Neil Tupaz, reported that
59 people had died and that more than two dozen others were missing.
"Iloilo is like an ocean," Tupaz said in a radio interview.Officials
said tens of thousands of displaced residents were moved to evacuation centers.
Flights were canceled and Monday classes suspended.Each year, about 20 typhoons
slam into the Philippines, an archipelago bordering the Pacitic in the path of
the storm systems.
Prof.
John Kurakar
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