Tens of thousands are forced to leave their homes due to flooding in the Philippines

Nearly 46,000 people had to leave their homes in the Philippines due to flooding on Christmas Day, according to civil defense authorities on Monday.

They stated, revising previous official estimates, that eleven people had died and 19 more were missing as a result of a week’s worth of very severe seasonal rain in the southern and eastern parts of the nation.

The nation’s most significant festival, which is celebrated by a majority of Catholics, was dampened by the floods that struck the south on Sunday.

According to Misamis Occidental provincial governor Henry Oaminal, rivers overflowed and flooded rural towns, roads, and the cities of Ozamiz and Oroquieta.

“The public market was among the areas of the city center that were inundated. In Oroquieta, the 72,000-person provincial capital, the power went out and there was no (telephone) signal, he said.

Although there have been floods in the past, he said, “this is the worst rainfall and water flow levels we have ever seen.”

Robinson Lacre, a civil defense worker from Gingoog city, where 33,000 of the 45,700 people who were evacuated from their houses, were located, told AFP by phone that the rains had stopped. “The floods reached over the chest in some sections, but today the rains have stopped,” he said.

At the height of the floods, the coastguard claimed to have saved members of more than twenty households in Ozamiz and the adjacent town of Clarin.

The coastguard shared images of its orange-clad rescuers holding young children pulled from their houses at night in waist-deep flooding.

The close southern towns of Jimenez and Tudela as well as Clarin reported seven fatalities, the most of which were due to drowning.

The coastguard also reported that a fishing boat was sunk on Christmas Day off the coast of Leyte, the main island, by strong winds and large waves. Six additional crew members were saved, while two were lost at sea.

Following floods that ravaged the eastern villages of Libmanan and Tinambac a few days before Christmas, two more people—including a newborn girl—drowned, according to the civil defense agency.