Air force chopper carrying five crashes while en route to help in typhoon response

Vehicles lie piled on after flooding caused by Typhoon Kalmaegi in Cebu city, yesterday

A Philippine air force helicopter with five personnel on board crashed in the country’s south while flying to help respond to the devastation wrought by Typhoon Kalmaegi, which has already left at least five people dead and set off widespread floodings that trapped residents on roofs in some central villages.

The Super Huey chopper crashed near Loreto town in southern Agusan del Sur province and efforts were underway to locate the air force personnel aboard who were deployed to help provide humanitarian assistance to provinces affected by the typhoon, the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command said in a statement.

Military officials didn’t immediately provide other details about the crash, including the condition of the five air force personnel aboard and what could have caused the crash.

Kalmaegi was last spotted over the coastal waters of Jordan town in the central province of Guimaras with sustained winds of 130 kph (81 mph) and gusts of up to 180 kph (112 mph). It was forecast to blow away into the South China Sea late Tuesday or early Wednesday after hitting the western province of Palawan.

An older villager drowned in floodwaters in Southern Leyte, where a provincewide power outage was also reported, and another person died after being hit by a fallen tree in central Bohol province, officials said.

Three other people died in central Cebu province, where officials reported flooding in several towns and villages.

Gwendolyn Pang, secretary-general of the Philippine Red Cross, said that an unspecified number of residents were trapped on their roofs by floodwaters in the coastal town of Liloan in Cebu.

“We have received so many calls from people asking us to rescue them from roofs and from their houses, but it’s impossible,” Pang told The Associated Press yesterday morning.

Cebu province was still recovering from a 6.9 magnitude earthquake on Sept. 30 that left at least 79 people dead and displaced thousands when houses collapsed or were severely damaged.

In Eastern Samar, one of the east-central provinces first lashed by Kalmaegi early Tuesday, fierce wind either ripped off roofs or damaged about 300 mostly rural shanties on the island community of Homonhon, which is part of the town of Guiuan, but there were no reported deaths or injuries, Mayor Annaliza Gonzales Kwan said.

“There was no flooding at all, but just strong wind,” Kwan told the AP by telephone. “We’re OK. We’ll make this through. We’ve been through a lot, and bigger than this.”

In November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones on record, slammed ashore into Guiuan. It then raked across the central Philippines, leaving more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattening entire villages and sweeping scores of ships inland. Haiyan demolished about a million houses and displaced more than 4 million people in one of the country’s poorest regions.

Yesterday, interisland ferries and fishing boats were prohibited from venturing into increasingly rough seas, stranding more than 3,500 passengers and cargo truck drivers in nearly 100 seaports, the coast guard said. At least 186 domestic flights were canceled.

The Philippines is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. JIM GOMEZ, MANILA, MDT/AP