MANILA, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Philippine soldiers hiked through a remote central province on Thursday to deliver food, water and clothes to thousands of evacuees after raging flood waters drowned 14 people and forced whole communities to flee.
Days of rain triggered the flooding in Eastern Samar, submerging roads and destroying bridges, making the remote rural province even more difficult to traverse.
"If the weather permits us, we're using helicopters to bring the relief goods," Lieutenant-General Pedrito Cadungog, head of the air force, told reporters after he dispatched a C-130 Hercules transport plane.
The waters have started to recede but more than 200,000 people have been affected in Eastern Samar as well as Leyte and Albay provinces, including tens of thousands who have been forced into temporary shelters.
Fourteen people were reported drowned and another seven were still missing, the Philippine Red Cross said.
The military was trying to get nearly 30,000 pounds (13,600 kilograms) of food and shelter materials to evacuees and hundreds of troops marched on foot to deliver bags of rice, packs of instant noodles, potable water, sleeping mats, tents and warm clothes.
Days of rains inundated rice fields and washed away wooden bridges, causing damage estimated at 500 million pesos ($12.2 million).
Separately, on the southern island of Mindanao, six people were killed in a landslide in Lanao del Norte province, burying several houses and destroying two small bridges late on Wednesday.
The weather bureau predicted more rains in the coming days because of an area of low pressure.
Landslides and floods are common in the Philippines, which is lashed by about 20 typhoons each year.
Environmental groups blame illegal logging for making flooding worse, particularly in the central Philippines, where more than 5,000 people died in 1991 in floods triggered by a typhoon.
In February 2006, about 1,000 people were buried alive when a a mudslide from a barren mountain covered a farming village on a central island. (Reporting by Manny Mogato; editing by Carmel Crimmins and Mathew Veedon)
Tubes holding filters and high-tech membranes remove salt from ocean water at the desalinization plant of Peruvian mining company Milpo at its Cerro Lindo mine in Chincha February 19, 2008. Fresh ...
