Manila (AsiaNews) - More rain and landslides in the provinces of Compostela Valley and Davao del Norte (Mindanao), crossed December 5, 2012 by the typhoon Bopha with more than a hundred dead and more than 800 thousand displaced. In recent days, nine other people were killed as a result of the wave of bad weather that hit the island with heavy rains and strong winds. Among the victims there is also a child of one.

Cynthia Perez-Salazar, in charge of Caritas Philippines emergency services, has told AsiaNews that more than one month after the passage of the typhoon the population is still in critical condition. According to data from the Unites Nation Office for Humanitarian Affairs, (OCHA), 6,445 people are housed in collective centers for displaced persons.  Instead 844,612 live with relatives or in makeshift shelters built on the side of their homes destroyed by landslides or by gusts of wind.

"Caritas - says Salazar Perez - has already helped thousands of refugees and in the coming weeks will extend the distribution of basic necessities and survival kits to 1000 families for people living in rural and remote villages." She stresses that volunteers and social workers will begin, the construction of housing units and centers in February to help stabilise the most affected areas, throughout the entire province of Compostela Valley.

Every year, the Philippine archipelago is hit by the passage of dozens typhoons, some of them devastating. Over 16 typhoons hit the country in 2012. In August there were a hundred deaths and a million displaced by a series of violent storms. In 2011 there were19 typhoons, 10 of which high intensity: the death toll reached 1,500 people mostly in Typhoon Washi (see AsiaNews 20/12/2011 Typhoon Washi, Manila declares a national emergency. First burials en masse). (S.C.)