Typhoon Sarika lashed the main Philippine island of Luzon on Sunday, flattening homes and toppling trees and power pylons as more than 12,000 people fled to safer ground, officials said. Minor landslides and flooding were also reported a day after the cyclone brushed past the remote eastern island of Catanduanes and left one person drowned and three others missing there.
“We were told roofs were ripped off houses and there were fallen trees but that’s about the extent of damage that we know of,” Ricardo Jalad, head of the government’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, told reporters. Nelianto Bihasa, the mayor of the town of Baler where Sarika made landfall before dawn, told ABS-CBN network the typhoon destroyed at least 20 houses and left one person injured there. FULL REPORT
