President Rodrigo Duterte will visit areas in Camarines Sur affected by tropical storm “Usman” on Friday, the Palace said Thursday.
“We will check on the stricken areas to further know what are the things that we need to do. We have prepared assistance,” presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said at a Palace briefing.
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Usman, which was downgraded into a low-pressure area, still managed to bring heavy rain to the three provinces of the Bicol region—Camarines Sur, Camarines Norte, and Albay—causing floods and deadly landslides.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council reported Thursday that the death toll from Usman has reached 122, significantly higher than the 85 reported on Wednesday. The figures have yet to be verified.
The region’s Office of Civil Defense, on the other hand, said the death toll in the Bicol region alone had reached 105, with 23 people missing and 53 people injured.
Usman, considered one of the deadliest storms since Super Typhoon “Ompong,” also devastated the region’s agriculture with losses of up to P816.17 million, the Department of Agriculture said.
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Panelo said that while local government units did everything they could to prepare for Usman, “there are things you cannot control.”
Power outages in some areas of Camarines Sur delayed the relay of information from the authorities to the residents, he said.
“There were areas for instance where the electricity was down, so the message from the local officials about the storm Usman did not reach the residents. Like in Sagñay, the locals there said the electricity was down a day before [Usman hit], so they were not able to monitor [developments],” he said.
He said Duterte seemed satisfied with the government’s preparations and the response from the relevant agencies following the calamity.
The NDRRMC said 75,326 families or about 308,451 people living in 624 barangays in Calabarzon, Mimaropa, Bicol and Eastern Visayas have been affected by Usman.
Of these, 6,217 families or 30,960 people were in 210 evacuation centers.
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Agricultural damage for Bicol and Eastern Visayas was placed at P528.51 million.
Some 2,896 houses have been damaged—698 destroyed and 2,198 partially damaged—in Calabarzon, Mimaropa and Eastern Visayas.
Usman also caused production losses of 18,634 metric tons and damaged 40,075 hectares of agricultural land affecting 36,902 farmers and fishermen in the provinces of Albay, Camarines Sur, Catanduanes, Sorsogon, Northern Samar, and Samar. With PNA