Six people died and with five others were missing after a small ferry capsized as tropical storm Chanchu slammed into the central Philippines on Friday, the coast guard reported.
Thirteen people were rescued after the MV May Anne went down in rough waters off the island of Masbate, the coast guard said. The storm had earlier caused the coast guard to suspend ferry operations, stranding some 6,000 people in ports in the central Visayas and eastern Bicol regions.
Television reports said the operators of the ill-fated ferry disregarded the coast guard's orders and set out to sea anyway. Chanchu, the first storm to hit the country this year, slammed into the Philippines overnight causing flash floods and landslides that forced the evacuation of hundreds of villagers, disaster relief officials said Friday.
Families from several villages in the town of Sogod, in the central island province of Southern Leyte, were also evacuated after heavy rains caused a landslide that cut off a highway, provincial governor Rosette Lerias told AFP.
At least 11 villages with about 1,000 families in Sogod had been isolated, with one vital bridge also impassable, Lerias said.
Another 40 families in the town of Macrohon were also evacuated after heavy flooding, she said.
"It has been raining really hard, and we had about 130 millimeters (five inches) of rainfall yesterday alone," Lerias said, adding that normal rainfall according to forecasters should be 550 millimeters in a week.
"We are working very closely with the national government in Manila and we have all the supplies we need," she said.
She said parts of Leyte as well as the entire province of Albay in the Bicol region were experiencing blackouts.
The storm came almost three months after torrential rains caused the collapse of a mountainside that engulfed the Leyte village of Guinsaugon, leaving more than 1,000 people buried alive under a massive mudslide.
Nerry Amparo, head of operations in Manila's Office of Civil Defence, said field reports coming in indicated zero casualties so far in the latest storm.
Storm warnings were hoisted in some 23 provinces and islands, including the capital Manila, where rain has fallen since Thursday.
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