AT LEAST 4,000 houses were destroyed while over 10,000 houses were damaged during the onslaught of Typhoon Ursula in the towns of Daanbantayan and Medellin in Cebu on Tuesday, December 24, 2019.

As of 8 a.m., Friday, December 27, Rhee Telen Jr. of the Cebu Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office said the figures were collated from 16 out of 20 barangays in Daanbantayan and 15 out of 19 barangays in Medellin.

"In Daanbantayan, 7,671 houses were partially damaged; 3,919 houses were totally damaged. In Medellin, 2,327 houses were partially damaged and 90 houses were totally damaged. The counting for the remaining barangays is still ongoing," he said.

Meanwhile, the search and retrieval operation for a certain Erickson Gimenez, the missing 19-year-old boatman in Santa Fe, is still ongoing.

Four persons were reportedly injured during the onslaught of Ursula. Two are from Bantayan and two from Daanbantayan in the mainland.

More than 9,000 families, or around 50,000 individuals, were evacuated in northern Cebu: 8,886 families in Daanbantayan and more than 700 in Medellin. However, some of the families have returned to their homes on Thursday, December 26.

The two towns, which were deemed hardest hit by the typhoon, were placed under a state of calamity on Thursday afternoon. (WBS)