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LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines — At least seven bodies were retrieved Sunday in Tiwi town in Albay province after Tropical Depression “Usman” caused landslides and flooding in at least four villages.

Manuel Damo, chief of the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, said some of the landslide victims were minors and that retrieval operations were still ongoing as of 1 p.m.

In the village of Sogod, responders retrieved the bodies of two males and one female landslide victims.

In Maynonong village, three landslide victims were also recovered.

In the village of Bariis, one person was believed to have drowned.

Four people were still missing in Sogod, two in Bariis, and three in Misibis. Responders believe that all the missing are already dead.

Damo said they had been conducting retrieval operations since 5 a.m. in the landslide-prone area.

“Those areas are not passable yet, so we are clearing Sogod village first in order to reach the other villages,” Damo said, saying the landslide and water were preventing rescue vehicles from getting through.

Damo said they believed that the victims were already in evacuation centers, but went back to their houses when Usman was downgraded into low pressure area (LPA) after making landfall over Eastern Samar at 6 p.m. Saturday.

READ: Usman’ weakens into LPA after making landfall over Eastern Samar

“They (victims) must have relaxed after Usman was declared an LPA . Most people don’t stay in evacuation centers, opting instead to go to houses of relatives that are in safer places,” Damo told Inquirer.

“They didn’t know that the rain would be more dangerous than the storm,” he said.

Some families were still in evacuation centers after rampaging flood water swept their houses away.

Power lines in Tiwi have not been affected by Usman, but electricity has been turned off to avoid accidents in the retrieval operations, Damo said.

However, the water sources of the town were damaged and were still not operational, affecting a large area as of this writing.

“The water utility provider said they were fixing the two sources,” he said. /cbb