Impatient travellers killed

Press, 15 August 1978, Page 8

Impatient travellers killed

l NZPA-Reuter Manila ! At least 34 people have j died, and thousands have ’ been made homeless in heavy floods and landslides throughout the northern ; Philippines. li A driver refused to take tlhis bus over a mudslide on • a mountain, and 30 passensigers took off on foot across tithe mud despite warnings of r danger. They were buried [under hundreds of tons of 1 earth suddenly cascading I down the mountainside, eyei;witnesses said. Attempts to dig them out were hampered by the ter- ’ i rain and the monsoon rains •'which have battered the - country for the past three ‘days. , Earlier two young people were buried by a mudslide, ■ watched helplessly by their . father and eight-months- ’ pregnant sister. She is now j in hospital in a state of . shock. The Ministry of Agriculture said that 15 per cent of lithe rice crop had been damJaged. | The Government radio reported that about 150,000 people affected by the flood- ’ ing and hundreds of families ’ had been taken into evacuation centres in Manila. In India, nearly 250 people have died in floods threatening six million people in 15.000 villages in northern India’s heaviest monsoons this century, Indian news agencies have reported. Most of the deaths — 29 last week-end, bringing the total to 248 — have been caused by sudden breaches of the swollen Ganges banks i or through brick and mud village huts collapsing. I Severe flooding is reported in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, and Punjab.