Storms Rake Philippines and Vietnam

MANILA-A tropical storm churned across the Philippines on Wednesday,causing deadly landslides before it moved into southern Taiwan,where it cut power and forced schools and businesses to close.The death toll from a separate storm in Vietnam rose to 34,with 17 missing and feared dead.The tropical storm was the worst to hit Vietnam this year.“It is still raining heavily in the mountains,”said Trinh Nhu Tien, a Vietnamese provincial disaster official.“The death toll could rise if the weather does not improve in the next few days.”Nguyen Ngoc Giai,another provincial disaster official,said hundreds of military and police officers had been mobilized for rescue efforts,food and medicine relief.“This is the worst flood I have seen in my life,”he said.The rains in the Philippines followed a three-month dry spell that prompted clergy members to urge congregations to pray for rain over the weekend.The dry spell had led to water shortages and caused sporadic power failures in Manila, the capital.Monsoon rains fed by the Philippine storm caused a landslide that buried seven houses and killed at least 10 people on Monday in the gold mining town of Maco in the southern Philippines,said Glenn Rabonza,administrator of the Office of Civil Defense.Another landslide buried a house and killed a 9-year-old boy in the northern mountain resort city of Baguio at dawn on Wednesday,the National Disaster Coordinating Council said.In Antipolo,east of Manila, policemen and firefighters pulled five children from rubble on Wednesday after a concrete wall collapsed on their house,Police Chief Superintendent Nicasio Radovan said.They had yelled for help from under the debris and were taken to a hospital with minor injuries,he said.Heavy rains flooded many Manila streets,forcing schools to close and leaving commuters stranded,officials said. Floods submerged nearly all of suburban Malabon near the capital,where water was neck-deep in some low-lying neighborhoods.There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries in the city,Bong Padua,a local government spokesman,said.The storm,which weather officials named Pabuk,blew out of the mountainous northern Philippines and then swirled across the southern tip of Taiwan,dumping heavy rain but causing no major damage or casualties,according to Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau.Pabuk-named after a large freshwater fish in Laos-was also threatening Guangdong Province in southern China,the Fujian Meteorological Observatory was quoted as saying.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/world/asia/09asiastorms.html?ex=1344312000&en=45f3bc667256b6e3&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
As in the days of Noah...