Philippines Ravaged After Storms

REAL, Philippines — Local officials asked for food, clothes, medicine and construction materials Saturday to help thousands of villagers overcome the devastation from back-to-back storms that killed about 650 people and left 400 more missing in the northern Philippines.

In the worst-hit coastal town of Real in Quezon province, about 45 miles east of Manila, hundreds of residents lined up for food at a school.

“If there’s a continuous flow of support, we can make it,” Mayor Arsenio Ramallosa said as he supervised the distribution of food and relief goods. “But at the moment, the government’s relief supplies would only be good for three days.”

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, her boots muddied after visiting typhoon-ravaged areas near Real, received loud applause from residents of the town, where about 240 people were killed and 144 are missing.

About 90% of the mostly thatch houses in Real, a coastal town of about 40,000 farmers and fishermen, were damaged when floodwaters uprooted trees and sent boulders and debris hurtling down nearby hills that many say were denuded by loggers.

Reinforcing a widely held belief that years of illegal logging made the slides possible, Arroyo told reporters: “I’m canceling all [logging] permits here and suspending issuance of all others.”