TALISAY, Philippines (AP) — The number of dead and missing in massive flooding and landslides wrought by Tropical Storm Trami in the Philippines has reached nearly 130 and the president said Saturday that many areas remained isolated with people in need of rescue. Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines on Friday, leaving at least 85 people dead and 41 others missing in in one of the Southeast Asian archipelago’s deadliest and most destructive storms so far this year, the government’s disaster-response agency said. The death toll was expected to rise as reports come in from previously isolated areas.
Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency personnel, backed by three backhoes and sniffer dogs, dug up one of the last two missing villagers in the lakeside town of Talisay in Batangas province Saturday. A father, who was waiting for word on his missing 14-year-old daughter, wept as rescuers placed the remains in a black body bag. Distraught, he followed police officers, who carried the body bag down a mud-strewn village alley to a police van when one weeping resident approaching him to express her sympathies.
The man said he was sure it was his daughter, but authorities needed to do checks to confirm the identity of the villager dug up in the mound. In a nearby basketball gym at the town center, more than a dozen white coffins were laid side by side, bearing the remains of those found in the heaps of mud, boulders and trees that cascaded Thursday afterno.
