Death toll on typhoon Frank reach almost 500

Miami
June 26, 2008
Story 2: Death toll on typhoon Frank reach almost 500

Based on the National and Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) Update as of June 26 at 6:00 am, the death toll already reached 498 compared to 293 deaths as of June 25 6:00 pm excluding those who died in the capsized MV Princess of the Stars.

According to the Office of Civil Defense Administrator Glen Rabonza, the sudden blow of numbers on the casualties happened Wednesday midnight after some of the regions that were affected by the typhoon Frank updated their reports.

One of the problems that the NDCC is experiencing on tallying the number of casualties, missing and injured is because some areas has no electricity yet, “Some of the areas are having difficulties to send information to us because there are no electricity and the communication lines are still erratic,” Rabonza said.

Rabonza also added that on each region, they are also verifying the number of death through body count, “It is not that easy to transmit all the information because we are validating it.”

On the NDCC report 498 were declared dead already, 288 injured and 263 reportedly missing.

416 out of 498 came from Region 6 where it was badly hit by the typhoon Frank.

Around 178,467 houses were damaged, 59,616 were totally damaged, 118,851 partially damaged. 37,015 of totally damaged houses and 59,835 partially damaged houses came from Region 6.

Many roads and bridges were still impassable as of the moment in Region 4B, 6 and 8, which resulted to about Php662.5M.

Damaged to agriculture already reached Php2.221B, in breakdown livestock damage is about Php17.867M, in fisheries Php2.262B and in rice, crops and corn already reached Php316M.

The NDCC already facilitated the release of 9,610 sacks of rice for the areas affected by the typhoon. The Department of Health already instructed their doctors on each region to attend to those who are sick to prevent causing epidemic outbreak.