Storm leaves 1 dead, forces thousands to evacuate in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A tropical storm lashed the northern and central Philippines Sunday, leaving at least one person dead and forcing more than 22,000 people to evacuate from flood- and landslide-prone villages, officials said.

Tropical Storm Fengshen was tracked at midday over Manila Bay with sustained winds of up to 65 kph (40 mph) and gusts of up to 90 kph (56 mph). It was expected to to move away from the main northern Philippine region of Luzon Sunday night, government forecasters said.

A villager drowned on Saturday in Roxas City in the central province of Capiz, where flooding in many villages was worsened by the onset of high tide, police and provincial officials said.

Five villagers died after their hut was hit early Sunday by a tree that residents had been trying to topple by burning in Pitogo town in the eastern province of Quezon, provincial police chief Romulo Albacea said by telephone, saying authorities were assessing whether to the classify the deaths as having been directly caused by the storm.

Fengshen, locally called Ramil, was forecast to start moving away from the main northern Philippine region of Luzon later Sunday into 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.