Philippine flood kills 29, survivors hunt rats
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-08-30 21:58

Philippine rescue teams evacuated thousands of people from the worst flooding in the central Luzon region since the 1970s as hungry victims hunted rats and birds for food.

Disaster officials said the death toll rose to at least 29 on Monday. About 1.3 million people have been affected by floods and landslides during five days of heavy rain caused by two typhoons churning north of the country.

Philippines President Gloria Arroyo (R) greets residents in the flooded city of Pampanga, northern Philippines. Thirty-two people have been killed and more than a million other people received assistance amid massive floods across the country. [AFP]

"Rescue efforts are still going on in several low-lying areas in Bulacan province," Neri Amparo of the National Disaster Coordinating Council told Reuters. "We started moving them out last night for their own safety."

She said the flooding on the vast plain of ricefields and fishponds, once the rice bowl of the Philippines, was the worst in more than 30 years. Damage to agriculture and infrastructure was estimated at $8 million.

The last large-scale flood on the main island of Luzon was in 1972 when the entire plain was under more than six feet of water for several days.

Manila, the sprawling capital of 12 million, dried out under sunny skies over the weekend after heavy rain caused flooding in some areas and forced the closure of government offices and schools on Wednesday and Thursday.

Amparo said floodwaters in Pangasinan, Tarlac and Pampanga provinces, north of Manila, had started to recede. But water levels in Bulacan started to rise on Sunday night, worsened by high tides in nearby Manila Bay.

The disaster agency was waiting for updates from many areas that remained inaccessible, Amparo said.

RATS AND BIRDS

Some displaced residents hunted rats and birds as food and other relief supplies ran low in makeshift villages that mushroomed overnight on an elevated highway in Bulacan.

A Filipino villager carries his air rifle to hunt rodents in a flooded village in Bulacan province in the northern Philippines, August 30, 2004. [Reuters]

"They are safe to eat and taste like chicken," Gaudencio Torres told Reuters as he aimed his airgun at dozens of rodents swimming from flooded ricefields.

"We couldn't fish, we couldn't get food from our farms. We have to survive with anything to eat."

A Reuters photographer also saw several men wading through waist-deep water, carrying children on their shoulders while clutching dead rats and birds.

Some children stopped cars on the crowded highway, begging for food and spare change. Others dug for worms to use as bait for fish that escaped damaged ponds.

The Philippines is hit by 17 to 20 typhoons every year. The most destructive in recent times was Thelma, which struck Leyte island in November 1991 and unleashed floods in Ormoc City that drowned about 5,000 people.

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