Posted December 06, 2012 19:54:13
Photo: Children look at the a damaged road destroyed by flash floods at the height of Typhoon Bopha (AFP: Ted Aljibe)
Photo: Residents clean their sofa next to their damaged house in New Bataan town, Compostela Valley province, Philippines (AFP: Ted Aljibe)
Photo: A girl sits on top of boulders washed to the road by flash floods at the height Typhoon Bopha in the village of Andap, New Bataan town, Compostela Valley province (AFP: Ted Aljibe)
Photo: Residents walk amongst their destroyed houses after Typhoon Bopha hit Compostela town, Compostela Valley province, in southern island of Mindanao (AFP)
Photo: Woman carrying her child wades through a flooded road brought about by heavy rains due to Typhoon Bopha (AFP)
Photo: Residents brave heavy rains after Typhoon Bopha hit the city of Tagum, Davao del Norter province, in southern island of Mindanao. (AFP)
Photo: Workers clear a road with a fallen tree after Typhoon Bopha hit the city of Tagum, Davao del Norter province on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines on December 4, 2012. (AFP)
Photo: Typhoon Bopha from the (NASA ISS/JSC)
A Philippines typhoon "miracle survivor" has been rescued after being trapped for two days under rocks and debris in flash floods that swept away his entire family and their farming hamlet.
Slathered in mud and teary-eyed, Carlos Agang recounted how a small community of banana and coconut farmers was obliterated as Typhoon Bopha unleashed a wall of water after making landfall on southern Mindanao island on Tuesday.
"It's a miracle that I survived, but I might as well be dead," Mr Agang told reporters as aid workers carried him off on a stretcher with a broken leg to be airlifted to hospital.
Typhoon Bopha ploughed across Mindanao, flattening whole towns in its 700-kilometre wide path with a deadly blend of hurricane-force winds, floods and landslides, leaving nearly 200,000 homeless and almost 500 dead.
It's a miracle that I survived, but I might as well be dead.
I was shouting for help all the time, but no-one came.
I don't know what happened to (my family). Perhaps they are all dead.
Typhoon survivor Carlos Agang
The typhoon triggered flash floods which carried away Mr Agang's mountainside home outside New Bataan along with him, his wife and four children.
The floodwaters deposited him downstream in a boulder-strewn field next to a river, where he lay pinned down for two days by rocks and debris.
"I was shouting for help all the time, but no-one came," said Mr Agang, who was finally rescued by local residents after surviving on coconuts and water.
"I don't know what happened to (my family). Perhaps they are all dead."
Rescuers also found a pregnant woman on the other side of the river with her one-year-old son, who had been caught up in the the floods that swamped their house.
"It happened so fast. Water came rushing to us while we were leaving our house to move to safer grounds," Lenlen Medrano, 23, said.
"I prayed hard over and over until we found ourselves on the riverbank."
Rescuers have recovered the bodies of 475 people, with hundreds still missing, and 179,000 people left homeless by the strongest typhoon to reach the Philippines this year.
Officials were still depositing unidentified corpses at a government yard in the centre of New Bataan, near a gymnasium packed with scores of homeless typhoon victims lying on mats on the wet, muddy floor.
Most houses and buildings in the town were flattened by boulders and logs that rolled down the mountainside, and the ground was carpeted with sludge.
Shell-shocked survivors scrabbled through the rubble to find anything that could be recovered, as relatives searched for missing family members among the newly arrived body bags delivered by soldiers.
Francisco Macalipay, an army soldier who commanded the truck delivering the bodies, said rescuers were struggling to reach villages amid the destroyed roads and wrecked bridges.
AFP/Reuters
Topics: cyclone, weather, disasters-and-accidents, floods, philippines
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