Baguio recorded seven deaths when a saturated mountainside collapsed onto three homes. City rescuer Esther Banawe said three people were still unaccounted for. Crews continued searching by hand because heavy rain made the work difficult, with a safety officer supervising amid concern that more slopes could fail.
Rainfall in the mountain resort, about four hours north of Manila, was already far above the normal total for the entire month. State weather forecaster Dan Villamil said Baguio received 1,413.2 millimetres, or 56 inches, between August 1 and 9. Its usual August rainfall is 963.2 millimetres, making the nine-day accumulation 47% higher than the monthly norm.
Parts of Metro Manila had received close to 90% of their typical August rain by the same point. Although precipitation continued on Monday evening, Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon said floodwater was beginning to recede.
Beyond Baguio, landslides killed six people elsewhere on Luzon. The civil defence count also included one person who drowned, one struck by a falling tree and one who was electrocuted. Those incidents, together with the seven deaths in Baguio, brought the reported toll to 16.
Dizon said immediate interventions were continuing but linked the disruption to longstanding problems with flood defences. He referred to years of faulty mitigation work and a scandal involving fictitious flood-control projects that cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
The emergency reflected the Philippines' sustained exposure to tropical weather. Located first in the path of the Pacific cyclone belt, the archipelago experiences 20 storms and typhoons in an average year. That exposure places millions of residents in areas vulnerable to flooding, landslides and related disasters.
The downpour was intensified by tropical storms, and some areas received more than a month's rain in just over a week. Scientists say climate change caused by human activity is making extreme weather events more frequent, longer-lasting and more intense. The supplied evidence did not attribute this particular episode to climate change through a specific study, but the broader trend raises risks for communities already facing regular cyclones.
Rescue work in Baguio remained active with three people missing, while officials monitored further landslide danger and falling rain. The receding floodwater offered some relief, but the casualty count showed that slope failures and weather-related accidents had already spread the impact well beyond flooded streets.
