RP volcanic flood death toll up

RP volcanic flood death toll up

T'BOLI, Philippines (Reuter): Raging floods which roared out from a volcanic landslip in the southern Philippines have killed 46 people and scores more are feared buried under an avalanche of mud, officials said yesterday.

Dad Tuan, mayor of T'boli village near Mount Parker, told reporters the number of dead had risen overnight to 46 from 41 after rescue teams scouring the village recovered the remains of five others swamped by the floods.

A landslip in Mount Parker's crater on Wednesday night triggered the massive floods which swept down the mountain on the southern edge of Mindanao island.

Survivors who scampered to safety ahead of a wall of water up to 20 feet (six metres) high said on Friday the floods crushed villagers in their houses and buried them under several feet of mud.

The floods caused more than 400 million pesos (US$15.5 million) in damage to rice, corn and coconut farms in the area, Hilario de Pedro, the governor of South Cotabato province, told reporters in a briefing late on Friday.

Tuan said many of the more than 500 people originally reported missing have been accounted for, but several dozen others may never be found under the mud.

The hamlet of New Dumangas, the worst-hit in T'boli, was flattened. More than half the wood and palm-thatch homes in the community of more than 5,000 people were smashed by boulders and lumber brought on by rampaging floods on Wednesday night.

Vulcanologists said they were still trying to establish the cause of the landslide into Lake Maughan, which lies at a height of 1,000 metres (3,000 feet) in Parker's two-km (1.2-mile) wide crater. Parker is 1,800 meters (6,000 ft) high.

Scientists with the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said Parker could be extremely dangerous if it erupts. They said Parker's structure resembles that of Pinatubo volcano, north of Manila, which exploded in 1991 and killed nearly 1,000 people in one of the century's biggest volcanic eruptions. Parker last erupted in 1640, the scientists said.

Pinatubo is still wreaking havoc in several provinces in the northern Philippines. Whenever there is heavy rain, it washes down tons of volcanic debris in the form of devastating mudflows called lahar which have buried entire villages in the area.