A palm tree came down on a bamboo house in Pitogo, Quezon province, early on Sunday and killed five members of one family, two of them children. A teenage boy was the only person in the house to survive. Disaster officials in the town said rescuers worked to recover the bodies, and photos they posted on social media showed the house flattened under the tree.
Pitogo is about 153km (95 miles) southeast of Manila. The family’s deaths account for the five lives lost to Tropical Storm Fengshen, called Ramil in the Philippines, as it crossed the country on October 19. Al Jazeera reported two more people missing.
Floods on Luzon, a landslide on Mindanao
The two missing were riding a motorised three-wheel vehicle in Bukidnon province on Mindanao when a large landslide set off by the heavy rain sent it off a highway. Public works officials said that road, which links Bukidnon with the neighboring Davao region, was closed to traffic.
On Luzon, the storm brought serious flooding. Aviation authorities ordered more than a dozen flights cancelled while Fengshen sat over the island, and by Sunday afternoon it was reported to be moving west toward the South China Sea. AFP quoted officials in southeastern Luzon who said at least 47,000 people had moved into government-designated temporary shelters since Saturday. Pagasa, the national weather agency, said at least five dams on Luzon opened their gates on Sunday to release water.
Officials also reported heavy flooding on Samar and Panay in the central Philippines, and residents were told to evacuate. In Estancia, on Panay, one man was hurt when his wooden house collapsed and pinned him, ABS-CBN reported. Floodwater swamped parts of Calbayog City in Samar.
A storm that almost disappeared
Fengshen was the twenty-fourth named storm of the 2025 Pacific typhoon season. The Japan Meteorological Agency first tracked it on October 12 as a tropical depression. Three days later it was downgraded to a low-pressure area and the agency stopped issuing advisories, though the Joint Typhoon Warning Center kept monitoring it.
A country still recovering
The Philippines is struck by about 20 storms and typhoons in an average year. Scientists warn that extreme weather is growing more powerful as the planet warms from human-driven climate change, Al Jazeera noted.
The storm also arrived as the country was recovering from a string of major earthquakes that killed at least 87 people over the previous three weeks.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr wrote on Facebook on Sunday that the country must “strengthen its disaster preparedness and response,” adding that it is “very prone to having disasters and calamities.”
