Residents fled flood-hit towns in the northern Philippines yesterday as relief supplies ran short and officials warned disease was spreading, days after storms left a trail of destruction and death. People in some of the worst-affected areas of Quezon province east of Manila begged fishermen and military helicopter pilots to take them away as many roads remained blocked by landslides. ?We?re leaving this place,? said 18-year May Leynes, one of hundreds of residents getting on a small boat heading out of Real town on the east coast, where more than 300 people died in landslides and floods last week.

?We might get sick. We have no more food to eat here.? A total of 628 people were killed and 718 were missing across the main island of Luzon. There was only limited space available in about 20 air force helicopters bringing relief goods and taking away the injured, elderly, infants, and pregnant women. ?They want out,? said Lieutenant-Colonel Restituto Padilla, an airforce spokesman. ?They are worried that an epidemic may break out because there were so many bodies of dead people and animals strewn around them.?

He said many children were getting sick, with cases of wound infections growing due to poor sanitation and a lack of clean water. Supplies of food, drinking water and medicine were running low. ?We?re worried a food riot could erupt because there are so many evacuees with limited supplies,? he said. A navy transport ship docked yesterday at Real?s commercial wharf and unloaded over 90 tonnes of relief goods ? rice, water, medicines, canned goods, blankets.

Soldiers transferred the supplies to trucks bound for Real and nearby Infanta, and General Nakar, the three coastal towns that bore the brunt of landslides and floods. ?These initial relief goods may be enough for only a few days,? Alberto Taule, the coast guard commander in Real town, told Reuters.

Disaster officials said relief had reached nearly 98 percent of the areas hit by the disaster. The agriculture department said over 1.6 billion pesos ($28.5 million) worth of crops and fishery products were destroyed or damaged by the storms. Last year, total agricultural output was about 215 billion pesos.

Logging has been blamed for exacerbating the disasters and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said at the weekend she was cancelling all permits to cut trees. But experts say the problem is more complex and warned the environmental cost is likely to rise without a more comprehensive policy approach. Poverty, failure of governance and graft could be among factors for the rapid disappearance of the forests.

Erik DE CASTRO