A Philippine town in the shadow of a volcano is hit by landslides it never expected

TALISAY, Philippines (AP) — As a storm pounded his rural home, Raynaldo Dejucos asked his wife and children to stay indoors and keep safe from a lightning strike or slippery roads.

One thing the 36-year-old didn’t mention was landslides. In the lakeside town of Talisay in the northeastern Philippines, the 40,000 inhabitants have never experienced them in their lifetime.

But after leaving home last Thursday to check his fish cages in the nearby Lake Taal, an avalanche of mud, boulders and toppled trees cascaded down a steep ridge and buried about a dozen houses, including his.

Talisay, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) south of Manila, was one of several towns ravaged by Tropical Storm Trami, the deadliest of 11 storms to hit the Philippines this year. The storm veered toward Vietnam across the South China Sea after leaving at least 152 people dead and missing. More than 5.9 million people were in the storm’s path in northern and central provinces.

“My wife was breastfeeding our 2-month-old baby,” Dejucos told The Associated Press on Saturday in a municipal basketball gym, where the five white coffins of his entire family were laid side by side with those of a dozen other victims. “My children were holding each other on the bed when we found them.”

“I was calling out the names of my wife and our children repeatedly. Where are you? Where are you?”

Disasters and migration to danger zones are a deadly mix

It’s the latest reality check in the Philippines, long regarded as one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, in the era of climate change extremes.

Located between the Pacific Ocean and South China Sea, the Philippine archipelago is regarded as the doorway for about 20 typhoons and storms that barrel through its 7,600