‘Paeng’ death toll climbs to 110
RAMPAGING floodwaters and landslide brought about by severe tropical storm “Paeng” has already left at least 110 persons dead, with 33 still missing amid continuing Philippine National Police (PNP) and Armed Forces’ “search, rescue, relief and retrieval” operations as of Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022.
According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), 79 of the 110 fatalities have already been confirmed, while 31 are still being subjected to validation.
It added that 59 of the deaths were recorded in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), which bore the brunt of “Paeng” specifically in Maguindanao province.
Another 101 people were also reported to have been injured by the storm.
As of press time, PNP, AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines), and Coast Guard personnel, backed up by teams from local government units (LGUs), are still searching for 33 people who went missing since last Saturday.
The storm caused the displacement of 865,981 persons, the majority of them already staying inside 2,728 government-run evacuation centers.
On orders of the government, police and military troops supervised the preemptive evacuation of nearly 345,000 affected residents. The displaced persons were residing in 70 barangays in 17 regions in the country.
The NDRRMC said it recorded 1,287 related incidents, many of them flooding as well as landslides triggered by heavy continuous rain.
Paeng’s onslaught also damaged at least 6,542 residential houses, of which 1,507 were totally destroyed while the rest were partially damaged.
Floodwater also damaged 55 infrastructures, many of them bridges hit by swollen rivers.
The NDRRMC placed the damage to agriculture initially at P1.3 billion as Paeng affected nearly 54,000 farmers and over 58,000 hectares of agricultural crops.
