Philippines cleans up after latest deadly typhoon

A day after Mirinae brought heavy rains and winds, crews were clearing roads of fallen trees and power lines in the capital Manila and nearby areas.

Efforts were being made to repair four bridges that collapsed in urban areas south of Manila, while power was slowly being restored to most of the 22 towns that were blacked out at the height of the typhoon, the Red Cross said.

“We have been told that power in most areas has been restored and in terms of flooding, the waters receded within hours,” national Red Cross secretary general Gwen Pang told AFP.

She said a pre-emptive evacuation of about 115,000 people in the typhoon's direct path to safer ground days ahead of its landfall had meant fewer casualties compared with two recent deadly storms.

As of early Sunday, Mirinae had weakened and was located 450 kilometers (279 miles) southwest of Manila in the South China Sea, the weather bureau said.

In its latest update Sunday noon, Manila's National Disaster Coordinating Council said the typhoon left “remarkably less damage to lives and properties” compared to two recent typhoons.

Tropical Storm Ketsana, which caused massive flooding on September 26, and Typhoon Parma, which hit a week later, together killed more than 1,100 people.

“People were more prepared and more or less knew what to do,” Pang said. “People did not wait until it was too late to evacuate and were quickly moved away from harm's way to safer ground.”

She said most of the more than 5,000 people who had moved into temporary shelters as Typhoon Mirinae lashed the main island of Luzon had begun trickling back to their homes as the weather cleared Sunday.

However, relief and rehabilitation efforts will continue for the 87,000 people still packed into evacuation centers whose homes were destroyed by Ketsana and Parma, she said.

Even before Mirinae hit, outlying districts that are home to more than a million people were expected to remain flooded into the New Year, raising concern among health experts of an outbreak of disease.

“We are moving into the early recovery stage, looking at shelter requirements as well as the medical concerns of these people,” Pang said.

A spokesman for President Gloria Arroyo said the government was grateful that Mirinae had left the country as quickly as it came.

“We thank our people for cooperating and by being more disaster-conscious,” Cerge Remonde told AFP. “Let us be henceforth more aggressive in disaster preparedness.”

Meanwhile, millions of Filipinos, including in suburban areas near Manila that are still flooded from earlier storms, trooped to cemeteries to honour the dead in annual commemoration of All Saint's Day as soon as the weather cleared.

Labourer Joel Lebrilla, 42, rented a small makeshift boat to get to the Angono public cemetery east of Manila where his mother's tomb remained under four feet (more than a metre) of dirty brown water.

He placed a lit candle on floating drift-wood and offered a silent prayer.

“The flood did not spare my dead mother,” Lebrilla told photographers.

While the Philippines is used to an average of 20 typhoons a year, the recent storms had tested its disaster response plans to the limit, forcing it to seek international help.

The storms also exposed the government's poor urban planning that has allowed sprawling shanty towns to rise beside floodways and riverbanks.

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