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 Nearly 13,000 houses were crushed and more than 22,300 damaged on
the eastern island of Samar, where Typhoon Hagupit made landfall on
Saturday and made slow progress across the country, officials said.
The Philippine weather bureau lifted all storm alerts after Hagupit,
one of several typhoons to hit the tropical archipelago each year,
was downgraded to a tropical depression and headed west towards
Vietnam.
Roofs were ripped from houses, wooden huts were reduced to matchwood
and coconut trees torn up by the roots. Most of the victims, on
Samar island, were washed away in floods and some hit by fallen
trees, the Philippine Red Cross said.
Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon told Reuters the agency received
reports that 35 people died but it can only confirm 22 deaths. The
official government death toll has risen to eight.
 "Access is very difficult. There are landslides, some are one-lane
roads. In the inner barangays (villages), many of the roads have
been washed out by flash floods," Gordon said.
"...It's a long trek (to the villages), it's like Yolanda all over
again," Gordon said, referring to super typhoon Haiyan, which hit
the same area of the central Philippines last year.
But the damage was nowhere near that wrought by Haiyan, which
destroyed or damaged more than a million homes, although farm damage
from Hagupit, mostly to rice crops, was initially estimated at 1.3
billion pesos ($29.17 million).
Learning lessons from Haiyan, which left more than 7,000 dead or
missing, authorities launched a massive evacuation effort days ahead
of the storm, emptying whole towns and villages.
Bank employee Arnalyn Bula told Reuters how howling winds had
pounded the walls of her aunt's two-storey concrete home in Dolores
in Eastern Samar, where her family sought shelter.
"Our kitchen was wrecked. Around us, our neighbors' homes were
flattened like folded paper," said Bula, 27.
Some residents in Dolores hung signs that read "help us" as they
appealed for food, water and shelter.
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"We were inside an evacuation site when the roof caved in," a woman
told local radio. "God saved us. There were no casualties. There
will still be Christmas for us."
President Benigno Aquino changed his mind and will travel to Busan
on Thursday to attend the annual summit of Southeast Asian countries
and South Korea. Earlier, he said he was skipping the event to focus
attention on the typhoon clean-up. The National Grid Corp said
nearly two million homes across the central Philippines and the
south of the main island of Luzon were still without power.
Domestic travel resumed, markets reopened and state workers returned
to offices. Some shopping malls used emergency power but schools
stayed closed for a second day. Mobile phone services were also
restored.
Thousands of people emerged from shelters to fix wrecked homes and
clean up debris, including fallen trees and power poles. Aid trucks
were reaching some of the hardest-hit areas after soldiers reopened
roads.
Armed forces head General Gregorio Catapang said two C130 planes
were taking in food, water and relief supplies.
(Additional reporting by Rosemarie Francisco, Manny Mogato, Karen
Lema and Neil Jerome Morales in Manila; Writing by Rosemarie
Francisco; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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