Super Typhoon Rai Leaves Miles of Wreckage in Philippines

MANILA — “The trees snapped like matchsticks.”

Ed Boysillo, 54, a municipal worker in Ubay, in the central Philippine province of Bohol, was describing the fearsome power of Super Typhoon Rai. The storm made its first landfall on Dec. 16, bringing torrential rains and packing winds up to 168 miles per hour, comparable to a Category 5 hurricane.

It blew away buildings, swelled rivers to overflow and forced more than seven million people to flee their homes. It cut off power, water and communications. It damaged critical infrastructure.

As of Monday morning, the storm had killed 389 people, injured 1,146 others and left 65 missing, official figures show. More than half a million people were still in evacuation centers or staying with friends and relatives.

The smell of death hung in the air in Bohol, where a family emerged from the wreckage to try to salvage a door festooned with Christmas decorations. An inflatable Santa Claus that had survived the lashing winds swayed forlornly in the air, its affable face a striking contrast to the destruction.

Antero Ramos, 68, who is from the village of Casare in Ubay, lost his wife, Tarsila Ramos, 61, and two of his daughters, Nita, 37, and Nenita, 28, in the storm.

“My wife decided that we should evacuate, so we decided to shelter in the bodega we used to store rice,” he said. “But as soon as we entered, the bodega collapsed on us,” he said.

The bodega’s caretaker also perished.

“This is a very sad Christmas,” Mr. Ramos said. “We had to bury them immediately because the funeral parlor could not get to the bodega because of the debris that was still on the roads.”

Rai, the international name for the storm (the local name is Odette), was the 15th typhoon to hit the country this year. The storm made eight more landfalls in multiple regions before veering away.

The Philippines sits on a typhoon belt and typically gets by about 20 storms a year. After Rai’s devastation, the country’s Climate Change Commission called for urgent action at the local level “to build community resilience against extreme climate-related events and minimize loss and damage.”

“As the level of global warming continues to increase,” it said in a statement last week, “these extreme weather events and other climate impacts are becoming severe, and may be irreversible, threatening to further set back our growth as a nation.”

In Bohol, where many of the storm deaths were recorded, overturned vehicles were piled up on the side of the highway and in fields on Monday. Countless trees and debris littered the terrain. Many of the deaths had occurred in coastal areas inundated by storm surges or where people had been crushed by houses that crumbled in the wind. Everywhere, people could be seen scouring the ruins of homes to salvage what was left of their old lives.

On a highway leading to Ubay, near a bay in Bohol, survivors of the storm had scrawled, “Help us,” a desperate plea to passing helicopters and airplanes.

Officials warned that residents in remote areas were running out of food. Countries such as the United States, Canada, China and South Korea have pledged aid. A United Nations agency called for…