At least 15 people were missing and more than 75,000 had fled their homes as tropical storm Meari moved out of the Philippines yesterday.Several areas in the capital Manila and outlying areas remained flooded, the Office of the Civil Defence (OCD) said.Benito Ramos, chief of the OCD, said more than 320,000 people were affected by the floods but only 75,150 people were forced to flee their homes and stay in 77 evacuation centres.“So far we have no casualties,” he said. Ramos said the initial estimate of damage to agriculture and infrastructure was P5.2mn ($121,000) The weather bureau said Meari, with maximum sustained winds of 105kph and gusts of up to 135kph, was moving towards the general direction of Okinawa, Japan.The bureau said rain would continue to batter the capital and outlying areas through the weekend due to the south-west monsoon. Wind damaged 15 houses in Quezon City yesterday, knocking down trees and electric posts and wrecking three cars, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said in its 6am report. One woman was injured as she fled her house, the report said.The home of San Miguel Corp Chairman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr was one of those damaged, Chief Superintendent George Regis said in a mobile phone message today. A gale also swept through Iloilo province in the central Philippines yesterday, damaging 24 houses and destroying 25, National Disaster said.Fifteen people are missing, including 10 fishermen from eastern provinces, the disaster agency reported. Nonstop rain caused La Mesa Dam, in Quezon City, and Ipo Dam, in Bulacan province, to overflow. Of the 75,150 people affected by the evacuation, more than 11,000 were from Marikina City in the capital, an area that also suffered flooding during Storm Ketsana almost two years ago.Rain caused flooding and snarled traffic in the capital on June 23, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported this week.The Philippines is regularly battered by tropical storms that form over the Pacific Ocean east of the island country. In September 2009, Ketsana flooded Manila and parts of Luzon, killing more than 400 people and affecting almost 5mn.“We are better prepared this time” than in 2009, Office of Civil Defence Administrator Benito Ramos said yesterday.Some areas in Quezon City and Marikina City were still impassable to vehicles as of 6am, police said in a report.Ten people died and four were missing after the tropical storm ‘Haima’ hit Vietnam’s northern and north-central coast, Vietnam news agency reported today. Seven of the dead were struck by lightning as they worked in rice fields, two were killed by a whirlwind and one was caught in a flash flood, the National Flood and Storm Control Committee said. Three people were swept away by floods and one was lost at sea while strong winds caused damage to more than 1,000 houses.South Korea was on alert yesterday as a powerful typhoon was moving fast toward it after causing heavy casualties in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries, according to Soth Korean News Agency (Yonhap).The typhoon, dubbed Meari, a Korean word which means “echo” in English, was traveling toward the Korean Peninsula at a speed of roughly 20kph from waters 240km northeast of Taiwan as of yesterday morning, the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) said. DPA