Philippines Floods: 15 Dead, Baguio Searches for Missing
The southwest monsoon, intensified by two tropical cyclones, has drenched Luzon for over a week: 15 dead, six missing under a landslide in Baguio, and more than 750,000 affected across 33 provinces.
At least 15 people have died in the Philippines from floods and landslides triggered by a southwest monsoon that two tropical cyclones are feeding with moisture, police said Monday, August 10. Thirteen people were injured, and at least six remain missing. For a reader in Serbia this is not just a distant disaster from the wire pages: it is the same weather system we wrote about earlier today in connection with China, which raised its highest alert level ahead of Typhoon Dolphin. The same cyclone that is forcing Beijing to evacuate coastal areas is pulling moisture over the Philippine archipelago, where it has, for now, claimed more lives than it has on the Chinese coast.
The official death toll shifted over the course of the day, a sign of how hard the terrain is to reach. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council initially reported 12 dead and eight missing, while a police count released a few hours later put the figures at 15 dead and six missing. The number of people affected jumped in the same day from half a million to more than 750,000 across 33 provinces.
The way people died explains why this is not an ordinary urban flood:
- nine people died in landslides and mudslides
- three drowned
- two were killed by electrocution
- one person was killed by a falling tree
Most deaths were recorded in the provinces of Benguet, Rizal and Batangas on the main island of Luzon, a belt that climbs from the lowlands into the mountainous interior.
Why did the habagat turn deadly this time?
Habagat, as the southwest monsoon is known in the Philippines, arrives every year and is not unusual on its own. What is different this time is duration: two tropical cyclones have kept moisture flowing over the same area for more than a week, so the ground never gets a chance to dry out between downpours. Once a mountainside is saturated to that degree, a landslide becomes a matter of hours, not a forecast. That is why most victims died buried under earth and mud rather than in water.
Baguio: four dead, about a dozen sites under watch
In the mountain city of Baguio in northern Luzon, a landslide buried several houses. Four people died, six remain missing, and the city’s information office says around 150 rescuers are working in shifts to search for and extract survivors. About a dozen other sites in the city are being watched for the risk of further landslides, meaning rescue crews are working on ground that could itself give way.
Baguio is the Philippines’ summer capital, built on steep slopes more than 1,500 meters above sea level. That topography is why a prolonged rain spell is measured differently here than in Manila: in the capital, water sweeps away traffic; in Baguio, it sweeps away a house.
Manila works from home, 20 ports shut down
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered government employees to work from home, and schools in Metro Manila and more than a dozen provinces switched to alternative learning arrangements. In some neighborhoods around the capital, floodwater reached waist height, and more than 8,000 people have been moved into evacuation centers.
The coast guard suspended operations at 20 ports in the central and eastern parts of the country, disrupting ferry traffic. In a nation of more than seven thousand islands, that is not a logistical footnote but a break in a basic transport link, since ferries are the only way for much of the population to travel between parts of the country.
The weather bureau is forecasting more heavy rain, so the death toll and the number of people affected will likely not stop rising after Monday. A clearer picture of the damage will only emerge once rescuers in Baguio finish searching the dozen or so sites still under watch, and that depends on when the rain lets up.
