Typhoon Kalmaegi kills 26 in Philippines; rescue helicopter crashes with 6 aboard

Typhoon Kalmaegi tore across the central Philippines on Tuesday, leaving at least 26 people dead in its wake—most of them drowned in the flooding that followed the storm's passage through the island nation's vulnerable heartland. The death toll climbed further when a Philippine air force Super Huey helicopter, en route to deliver humanitarian aid to the battered provinces, crashed near Loreto town in Agusan del Sur. All six people aboard were killed. The military's Eastern Mindanao Command recovered the bodies but offered no explanation for what brought the aircraft down.

The storm itself carried sustained winds of 81 miles per hour with gusts reaching 112 miles per hour when it was last tracked over the coastal waters near Jordan town in Guimaras province. Forecasters expected it to push westward into the South China Sea by late Tuesday or early Wednesday, after crossing the western province of Palawan. But by then the damage across the central islands was already severe. Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV, deputy administrator of the Office of Civil Defense, confirmed the death toll while noting that many details were still being verified. Among those confirmed dead was an elderly villager who drowned in Southern Leyte, where the entire province lost power after the typhoon made landfall around midnight. In Bohol, a resident was killed by a falling tree.

The flooding trapped scores of people in places they could not escape. In the coastal town of Liloan in Cebu province, residents climbed onto their roofs as water rose around them. In other Cebu communities, cars floated in the floodwaters or sat submerged. Gwendolyn Pang, secretary-general of the Philippine Red Cross, described the impossible calculus facing rescue teams: "We have received so many calls from people asking us to rescue them from roofs and from their houses, but it's impossible. There are so many debris, you see cars floating so we have to wait for the flood to subside." The organization fielded calls throughout Tuesday morning from residents stranded in their homes.

Cebu province was already fragile when Kalmaegi arrived. On September 30, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake had struck the region, killing at least 79 people and displacing thousands when houses collapsed or suffered severe damage. The province had not finished recovering when the typhoon hit. In Eastern Samar, one of the first provinces to feel the storm's force early Tuesday, about 300 mostly rural shanties on the island community of Homonhon lost their roofs or sustained damage from the fierce winds. Mayor Annaliza Gonzales Kwan reported no deaths or injuries there, though she acknowledged the destruction. "There was no flooding at all, but just strong wind," she told the Associated Press. "We're OK. We'll make this through. We've been through a lot, and bigger than this."

That resilience was forged in catastrophe. In November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan—one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded—made landfall near Guiuan, the same municipality now dealing with Kalmaegi's aftermath. Haiyan killed or left missing more than 7,300 people, flattened entire villages, swept ships inland, destroyed about 1 million houses, and displaced more than 4 million people across the central Philippines. The region never fully recovered from that blow.

Before Kalmaegi made landfall, more than 387,000 people had evacuated to safer ground in the eastern and central provinces. Authorities had warned of torrential rains, destructive winds, and storm surges reaching nearly 10 feet. The coast guard prohibited interisland ferries and fishing boats from operating in the increasingly rough seas, stranding more than 3,500 passengers and cargo truck drivers at nearly 100 seaports. At least 186 domestic flights were canceled.

Kalmaegi was the 20th tropical cyclone to strike the Philippines in 2025. The country endures roughly 20 typhoons and storms annually, a relentless cycle compounded by its position on the Pacific Ring of Fire—more than a dozen active volcanoes dot the archipelago, and earthquakes strike frequently. Few places on Earth face such a convergence of natural hazards. For the residents of Cebu, Eastern Samar, Southern Leyte, and Bohol, the question was not whether another disaster would come, but when.