Flash floods and mudslides kill at least 100 in the Philippines

Flash flooding in the Philippines, December 2017 — (Image credit: Ferdinandh Cabrera/Getty Images)

At least 100 people were killed Friday by flash flooding and mudslides caused by Tropical Storm Tembin on the Philippines island of Mindanao, and dozens more remain missing Saturday morning. In the towns of Tubod and Piagapo, several homes were crushed by boulders moved by the mudslides. Rescuers have had trouble finding bodies of the storm's victims because of the mud.

"Many people were swept to the sea as flood waters quickly rose due to the high tide," said Manuel Luis Ochotorena, a disaster agency official. "They never heeded the warnings. They thought it was a weak storm but it dumped more rains."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.