Seven dead, thousands evacuated as tropical storm batters Philippines

Philippine rescuers waded through chest-deep floodwaters Wednesday to reach residents trapped by Tropical Storm Trami, which has killed seven people and forced thousands to evacuate as it barrels toward the east coast.

Torrential rain driven by the storm has turned streets into rivers, submerged entire villages and buried some vehicles in volcanic sediment set loose by the downpour.

At least 32,000 people have fled their homes in the northern Philippines, police said, as the storm edges closer to the Southeast Asian country's main island of Luzon.

In the Bicol region, about 400 kilometers (249 miles) southeast of the capital Manila, "unexpectedly high" flooding was complicating rescue efforts, said police.

"We sent police rescue teams but they struggled to enter some areas because the flooding was high and the current was so strong," regional police spokeswoman Luisa Calubaquib told AFP.

One person drowned inside a bus that was swept away by floodwaters in the Bicol city of Naga, where three others also drowned, police officer Bryan Ortinero told AFP.

An elderly woman drowned in Quezon province southeast of the capital, while a toddler was also killed after falling into a flooded canal, police said.

Manila's civil defence office reported one person was killed by a falling tree branch.

As of 2 pm (0600 GMT), Trami's centre was 160 kilometers east of Luzon's Aurora province with maximum sustained winds of 85 kilometres per hour, the national weather agency said.

It was expected to smash into the northeastern coast near the town of Divilacan at 11 pm (1500 GMT).

Photos verified by AFP on Wednesday showed streets submerged by muddy floodwaters in Camarines Sur province's Bato municipality, with only the roofs of houses and convenience stores visible.

"It's getting dangerous. We're waiting for rescuers," resident Karen Tabagan told AFP.

- 'Feeling a little helpless' -

In Naga, about 40 kilometers from Bato, half of the 600 villages were fully submerged by flooding.

At an emergency meeting of government agencies Wednesday morning, President Ferdinand Marcos said that "the worst is yet to come".

"I'm feeling a little helpless here because... all we can do is sit tight, wait, hope and pray that there is not too much damage, that there are no casualties."

Families driven from their homes in Bicol were being sheltered at about 2,500 evacuation centres scattered across the region.

"There was also a lahar flow in Albay due to the rains," Calubaquib, the Bicol police spokeswoman said, referring to volcanic sediment flowing from the Philippines' famous Mayon volcano.

Further north, authorities evacuated 216 people from the coast near Divilacan and another 60 from nearby Palanan municipality after the weather service warned of the "moderate to significant risk of life-threatening storm surge" or high coastal waves.

"They had to conduct preemptive evacuations in response to the storm surge warning .... They had to evacuate some Indigenous people who are living in houses made of light materials," Isabela provincial disaster official Constante Foronda told AFP.

Typhoons are common around the region at this time of year.

However, a recent study showed that they are increasingly forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change.

About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the Philippines or its surrounding waters each year, damaging homes and infrastructure and killing dozens of people.