Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared a state of emergency on Thursday after Typhoon Kalmaegi left at least 241 people dead and missing in central provinces in the deadliest natural disaster to hit the country this year.
Kalmaegi left at least 114 people dead, mostly from drowning in flash floods, and 127 missing, many in the hard-hit central province of Cebu, before the tropical cyclone blew out of the archipelago on Wednesday into the South China Sea. The typhoon’s onslaught, which affected nearly 2 million people, displaced more than 560,000 villagers, including nearly 450,000 who were evacuated to emergency shelters.
Marcos’s emergency declaration, made during a meeting with disaster-response officials to assess the typhoon’s aftermath, would allow the government to disburse emergency funds faster and prevent food hoarding and overpricing.
