MANILA, Philippines - Many Filipino villagers managed to save only the clothes on their backs but began to rebuild Sunday as the floodwaters receded from a tropical storm that set off the worst flooding in the Philippine capital in 42 years and left about 80 dead.
Army troops, police and civilian volunteers plucked dead bodies from muddy floodwaters and rescued drenched survivors from rooftops after Tropical Storm Ketsana tore through the Northern Philippines a day earlier, leaving at least 106 people dead and missing.
Some residents began to clean up as the flood waters receded. Still, many parts of the capital remained flooded. A brief period of sunshine showed the extent of the devastation in many neighborhoods - destroyed houses, overturned vehicles and roads covered in debris and mud.
Ketsana dumped more than a month's worth of rain in just 12 hours, causing the government to declare a "state of calamity" in metropolitan Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces. The declaration allowed officials to use emergency funds for relief and rescue.
The rains swamped entire towns and set off landslides that have left at least 83 people dead and 23 others missing, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said. Garbage-choked drains and waterways, along with high tide, compounded the flooding, officials said.
Governor Joselito Mendoza of Bulacan province, north of the capital, said it was tragic that "people drowned in their own houses" as the storm raged.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo toured the devastated areas and prodded villagers to move on.
She said the storm and the flooding were "an extreme event" that "strained our response capabilities to the limit but ultimately did not break us."
Ketsana is the 15th of about 20 typhoons and storms that forecasters expect will lash the country this year.
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