(CNN) — Rescue crews in the Philippines worked Wednesday to overcome washed-out roads, downed power lines and poor communications as they tried to reach what’s left of remote villages to search for hundreds of people missing after a powerful typhoon.
Tens of thousands of people were left homeless after Typhoon Bopha raked the large southern island of Mindanao with heavy rains and sustained winds of up to 175 kph (110 mph).
The storm wiped out the mountain village of Baculin and killed at least half of the residents of nearby Kinablangan, the official Philippines News Agency reported Wednesday.
Bopha also severely damaged almost all of the homes in the villages of Boston, Cateel and Baganga, Davao Oriental Gov. Corazon Malanyaon told PNA.
“I felt like there was an earthquake because the winds and rain were so strong,” said Herbert Yepis, a staff member of the humanitarian group World Vision working in Mindanao.
Watch: iReporter captures Typhoon aftermath in southern Philippines
Categories: Asia, Philippines, Weather
Montevista, Philippines (CNN) — Bent over amid the wreckage of her family’s home, Jane Bucani, 17, leafs through the sodden remnants of her school yearbook, trying to see what memories she can salvage.
Her mother, Rosal, picks among the jumble of debris where her kitchen used to be. The broken appliances strewn across the floor are the only indication that this was where she would cook for her five children.
And they are some of the more fortunate ones.
Up and down the poor, remote Compostela Valley region on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, families like the Bucanis are trying to come to terms with what hit them.
Thousands of flimsy houses have been ripped to shreds. Scores of people are dead. Hundreds more are still missing, swept away in flash floods that roared down from the hills.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/06/world/asia/philippines-typhoon/?hpt=zite_zite2_featured