Philippines hit by deadly torrential rain, landslides

Torrential rains set off two landslides that killed seven people and floods that displaced more than 3,000 villagers in the southeastern Philippines, officials said on Friday. A boulder-laden landslide buried a house and killed a couple and their two daughters Friday in the coastal city of Mati in Davao Oriental province, disaster-response and provincial officials said.

Rescuers used earth-moving equipment to retrieve the bodies, according to Ednar Dayanghirang, regional director of the Office of Civil Defence.  In Monkayo, a gold-mining town in Davao de Oro province near Davao Oriental, the remains of three people were dug up after their house was buried late Thursday by a landslide, Dayanghirang and other officials said. Nearly 10,000 were affected by the downpours in recent days, including more than 3,200 people who were forced to move to emergency shelters or with relatives, Dayanghirang said.

Several outlying provinces and towns were forced to cancel classes and work, he said. The downpours and thunderstorms occurred well ahead of the typhoon season, which usually starts in June, and were caused by cold wind interacting with warm and moist air from the Pacific, forecasters said. About 20 typhoons and storms each year batter the Philippine archipelago, which also lies in the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are common, making the Southeast Asian nation one of the world’s most disaster-prone.