Tropical storm causes 7 deaths in the Philippines

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A tropical storm lashed the northern and central Philippines over the weekend, killing seven people after forcing more than 22,000 people to evacuate from flood- and landslide-prone villages.

Tropical Storm Fengshen blew away from the main northern Philippine region of Luzon into the South China Sea late Sunday. It currently has sustained winds of up to 65 kph (40 mph) and gusts of up to 80 kph (50 mph), government forecasters said.

The government’s disaster-mitigation agency said seven deaths were reported. Nearly 14,000 people who evacuated remained displaced from their homes by Monday, the agency said.

One person drowned Saturday in Roxas City in the central province of Capiz, where high tide worsened flooding in many villages, officials said.

Five people, including two children, died while they were sleeping when their hut was hit early Sunday by a huge palm tree that they had burned before to try to topple it for safety reasons in Pitogo town in the eastern province of Quezon, provincial police chief Romulo Albacea and other officials said.

Fengshen, locally called Ramil, was forecast to blow across the South China Sea on a course toward Vietnam, state forecaster Glaiza Escullar said.

The storm, the 18th tropical cyclone to batter the Philippine archipelago this year, hit as central and southern provinces were still recovering from recent earthquakes that left more than 80 people dead, displaced thousands of people and damaged more than 134,000 houses in central Cebu province alone, the country’s disaster-mitigation agency said.

The Philippines, which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Seas, is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. It’s often hit by earthquakes and has about two dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.