Manila: The death toll due to the onslaught of Super Typhoon Noru has gone up to 9, according to the officials, even as the supertyphoon makes its way toward Vietnam on Tuesday.
The 9 fatalities include 5 veteran rescuers killed in Bulacan, 2 fatalities in Zambales, and 1 each in Quezon Province and Bataan, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction & Management Council (NDRRMC).
Homes, lives, crops destroyed
Extensive damage to agriculture was also recorded as the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines brought heavy rain and fierce winds which hammered the country's most populous island.
Typhoon Noru toppled trees, knocked out power and flooded low-lying communities as it swept across Luzon.
"They were deployed by the provincial government to a flooded area," said Lieutenant-Colonel Romualdo Andres, chief of police in San Miguel.
Andres said the rescuers were wading through floodwaters when a wall beside them collapsed, sending them into the fast current.
'Explosive intensification'
The supertyphoon has kicked up a strom surge in eastern Philippines on the main Luzon island.
An elderly man died after he was hit by a landslide in Burdeos municipality on the Polillo islands, part of Quezon province, where the storm made landfall, said Garner Jimenez from the local civil defence office.
The Philippines is regularly ravaged by storms, with scientists warning they are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.
Noru smashed into the archipelago nation on Sunday after an unprecedented "explosive intensification" in wind speeds, the state weather forecaster said earlier.
It made landfall about 100 kilometres (62 miles) northeast of the densely populated capital Manila, before weakening to a typhoon as it crossed a mountain range, coconut plantations and rice fields.
Floods submerged swathes of farmland and communities in the north, video and images shared by the president's office showed, after the category 3 typhoon dumped heavy rains and brought strong winds after making landfall at the weekend.
Nearly 75,000 people were evacuated from their homes before the storm hit, as the meteorology agency warned heavy rain could cause "serious flooding" in vulnerable areas, trigger landslides and destroy crops.
But on Monday, the storm moved over the South China Sea towards Vietnam.
Aerial footage taken during Marcos's inspection flight over central Luzon showed rivers that were swollen or had burst their banks, and patches of farmland under water.
