“When we were doing aerial inspection, I noticed that landslides occurred in denuded mountains and that was the problem,” said Marcos, who also visited an evacuation centre in Maguindanao province.
Most of the casualties from Nalgae, the country’s 14th cyclone this year, were in the southern autonomous region of Bangsamoro because of rain-induced landslides in deforested areas.
The Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,600 islands, sees an average 20 typhoons a year, with frequent landslides and floods blamed on the growing intensity of tropical cyclones due to climate change.