The death toll from the massive flooding and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Trami in the Philippines has reached nearly 130, and the president said many areas remained cut off with people in need of rescue.

Trami swept off the northwestern Philippines on October 25, leaving at least 85 people dead and another 41 missing in one of the deadliest and most destructive storms in the Southeast Asian archipelago so far this year, a declared the government’s disaster response agency. The death toll was expected to rise as reports came in from previously isolated areas.

Dozens of police, firefighters and other emergency personnel, backed by three bulldozers and sniffer dogs, unearthed one of the last two missing villagers in the lakeside town of Talisay in Batangas province on Saturday.

A father, waiting for news of his missing 14-year-old daughter, cried as rescuers placed the remains in a black body bag. Upset, he followed the police officers, who carried the body bag down a mud-strewn lane to a police van, when a sobbing resident approached him to offer his condolences.

The man said he was sure it was his daughter, but authorities had to run checks to confirm the identity of the villager dug into the mound.

In a downtown basketball court, more than a dozen white caskets were placed side by side, carrying the remains of those found in the piles of mud, boulders and trees that cascaded Thursday afternoon down the steep slope of on a wooded ridge in Talisay’s Sampaloc Village.

President Ferdinand Marcos, who inspected another hard-hit region southeast of Manila on Saturday, said the unusually high volume of rainfall dumped by the storm – including some areas that recorded one to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours – overwhelmed flood control. in provinces scourged by Trami.

“The water was too much,” Marcos told reporters.

“We are not done with our rescue work yet,” he said. “Our problem here, there are still many areas that have remained flooded and could not be accessed even by large trucks.” His administration, Marcos said, will plan to start work on a major flood control project that can deal with the unprecedented threats posed by climate change. .

More than 5 million people were in the path of the storm, including nearly half a million who mostly fled to more than 6,300 emergency shelters in several provinces, the government agency said.

At an emergency Cabinet meeting, Marcos expressed concern over reports from government forecasters that the storm – the 11th to hit the Philippines this year – could make a comeback next week as it is pushed back by winds high pressure from the South China Sea. .

The storm was forecast to hit Vietnam over the weekend if it did not deviate from its course.

The Philippine government closed schools and government offices for a third day on Friday to keep millions of people safe on the main northern island of Luzon. Inter-island ferry services were also suspended, stranding thousands.

The weather calmed down in many areas on Saturday, allowing for clean-up work in most areas.

Each year, about 20 storms and typhoons hit the Philippines, an archipelago in Southeast Asia that lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones on record, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and flattened entire villages.