HONG KONG — The official death toll from Typhoon Bopha climbed to 325 by Thursday afternoon, and with nearly 400 Filipinos still unaccounted for, the typhoon appeared as if it would be twice as deadly as Hurricane Sandy, the storm that thrashed the Caribbean and the eastern United States six weeks ago.
Sandy killed at least 253 people, including 132 in the United States. President Obama is expected to ask Congress this week for about $50 billion to help states in their post-Sandy recovery efforts.
Typhoon Bopha, known as Pablo in the Philippines, arrived on Tuesday, packing winds up to 100 miles per hour. It washed away entire villages and hamlets; wiped out roads and bridges; flattened cornfields and banana plantations; wrecked fishing fleets; and buried homes under landslides and walls of mud.
In some towns, dead bodies were gathered together in rows, their faces covered by tarpaulins, sodden blankets or palm fronds.
“Bodies of victims were laid on the ground for viewing by people searching for missing relatives,” The Associated Press reported. “Some were badly mangled after being dragged by raging floodwaters over rocks and other debris. A man sprayed insecticide on the remains to keep away swarms of flies.”
In one village, the mud-caked body of a child lay under a sheet with a note attached. It read: “4 yrs. old, male.”
One survivor, Julius Julian Rebucas, told Reuters that his mother and brother had been swept away in a flash flood. “I no longer have a family,” he said.
He can be seen being carried to an ambulance in a BBC video here.
Bopha struck most heavily in the southern Philippines, which typically dodges the 20 or so typhoons that slam the country every year. My colleague Floyd Whaley spoke to a military official who said most of the fatalities were in the province of Compostela Valley, a mountainous gold mining area, and the adjoining province of Davao Oriental.
The Philippine news site Rappler had a live blog going, tracking the progress of the storm and giving government information on deaths, damage and where people could donate food or supplies.
The national weather agency of the Philippines was sending regular updates on its Twitter feed here. Its Web site is located here.
Twitter also assembled the addresses of accounts offering information on relief efforts, and the service recommended using the hashtag #pabloPH for storm-related tweets and searches.
A New York Times slide show of the storm’s aftermath is here.
When floods hit Manila in the summer, a quarter-million people in the capital were made homeless. But as we reported on Rendezvous, “on social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, and through text messages, Filipinos demonstrated a remarkable civic spirit as they shared news of evacuation centers and dropoff points for donations of emergency supplies.
“They praised rescue teams, and they encouraged each other. They pleaded for calm — and there were few reported signs of panic, even from those who were stranded. And they prayed.”
Gwen Garcia, the governor of the Philippine province of Cebu, endorsed practical preparations — and prayer — in a tweet on Tuesday:
In his article, Floyd also noted that “last December, Tropical Storm Washi — another out-of-season storm that hit south of the usual Philippine typhoon belt — killed more than 1,200 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.
“This year, officials put out strong warnings days in advance and carried out mandatory early evacuations of vulnerable communities.”
