MANILA, Philippines (AP) â€" Flash floods ravaged a southern Philippines segment inexperienced to critical storms, murdering during slightest 450 people while they slept, rousting hundreds of others to their rooftops and branch dual coastal cities into muddy, debris-filled waterways that were strewn with overturned vehicles and defeated trees.
With scarcely 300 people missing, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and tip troops officials were to fly to a worst-hit city of Cagayan de Oro on Sunday to assistance manage search-and-rescue efforts and understanding with thousands of replaced villagers, as a continue began to transparent and floodwaters receded. Among a equipment urgently indispensable are coffins and physique bags, pronounced Benito Ramos, who heads a government's disaster-response agency.
"It's overwhelming. We didn't design these many dead," Ramos said.
Army officers reported unclear bodies piled adult in morgues in Cagayan de Oro city, where electricity was easy in some areas, nonetheless a city of some-more than 500,000 people remained though daub water.
Most of a victims were defunct Friday night when distracted floodwaters cascaded from a plateau after 12 hours of sleet from a late-season pleasant charge in a southern Mindanao region. The segment is inexperienced to a typhoons that are common elsewhere in a archipelago.
Ayi Hernandez, a former congressman, pronounced he and his family were resting in their home in Cagayan de Oro late Friday when they listened a shrill "swooshing sound" and H2O fast rose ankle-deep inside. He motionless to leave to a neighbor's two-story house.
"It was a good thing, since in reduction than an hour a H2O rose to about 11 feet (3.3 meters)," stuffing his home adult to a ceiling, he said.
At slightest 450 people were killed in a floods, Philippine Red Cross Secretary General Gwen Pang and other officials said. At slightest 229 died in Cagayan de Oro and 144 in circuitously Iligan, that has some-more than 300,000 residents. The rest died in several other southern and executive provinces, Pang said.
Many of a bodies were unclaimed after scarcely 24 hours, suggesting that whole families had died, she said.
The Office of Civil Defense pronounced 274 people were missing, though Ramos pronounced a series would approaching arise as some-more margin reports come in. So far, 437 people have been rescued.
Cagayan de Oro and Iligan were filled with scenes of drop and desperation.
A distended stream sent floodwaters purgation by neighborhoods that do not customarily knowledge flooding. A male floated in an middle tube in murky H2O dirty with cosmetic buckets, pieces of timber and other debris. Ten people in one home stood on a tilted roof, watchful for rescuers even as H2O still flooded a reduce floors.
Local radio footage showed murky H2O rushing in a streets, unconditional pided all sorts of debris. Thick layers of sand coated streets where a waters had subsided. One automobile was thrown over a petrify blockade and others were dejected and piled in a flooded canal.
Ramos attributed a high casualties in Mindanao "partly to a relief of people since they are not in a common trail of storms" notwithstanding 4 days of warnings by officials that one was approaching.
Thousands of soldiers corroborated adult by hundreds of internal police, reservists, seashore ensure officers and municipal volunteers were mobilized for rescue efforts, though they were hampered by a flooded-out roads and miss of electricity.
The blank enclosed distinguished Filipino radio broadcaster Enie Alsonado, who was swept pided while perplexing to save his neighbors, Iligan Mayor Lawrence Cruz said.
Authorities recovered bodies from a sand after a H2O subsided. Parts of petrify walls and roofs, defeated vehicles and other waste dirty a streets.
Rescuers in boats rushed offshore to save people swept out to sea. In Misamis Oriental province, 60 people were plucked from a sea off El Salvador city, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) northwest of Cagayan de Oro, pronounced disaster central Teddy Sabuga-a.
Cruz pronounced a Philippine seashore ensure and other rescuers were scouring a waters off Iligan for survivors or bodies that might have been swept pided to sea.
In usually 12 hours, Tropical Storm Washi dumped some-more than a month of normal rains on Mindanao. The charge strike a western range of Palawan on Sunday and was approaching to blow out of a nation into a South China Sea after in a day.
Forecaster Leny Ruiz pronounced annals uncover that storms that follow a same trail as Washi come usually once in about each 12 years.
Palawan officials pronounced mobilized puncture crews were on standby as a charge approached.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pronounced in a matter that a Obama administration offering a "deepest condolences" for a extinction in a southern Philippines.
"The U.S. supervision stands prepared to support Philippine authorities as they respond to this tragedy," a matter said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those affected."
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Associated Press writers Oliver Teves and Hrvoje Hranjski contributed to this report.
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