MANILA - Rescue workers on Monday continued to clear roads in parts of Northern Luzon to bring much needed food, water and other supplies to survivors of landslides and floods that killed nearly 300 people.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) said over 50 road sections and nine major bridges had either been destroyed in the landslides or washed away by floods, making it difficult to reach hardest hit areas. Total damage to roads in Luzon is estimated at P1.4 billion, according to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

DPWH Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane imposed a schedule for vehicles traversing Kennon Road on Baguio City after it was opened to traffic Sunday night. From 5 a.m. to 12 noon, only vehicles going down Kennon would be allowed on the road while vehicles going up to Baguio will be alowed from noon onwards.

Ebdane said only vehicles with a 14,000-liter maximum load would be allowed on Kennon. He said Naguilian Road will be opened at 5 p.m. Monday while Marcos Highway will be opened Tuesday after a private contractor clears the road.

An Agence France-Presse photographer said thousands of desperate residents were clambering through debris and negotiating road-side cliffs to bring supplies or to seek help.

Baguio Mayor Peter Bautista said on local radio that the city of 300,000 people was running low on food and petrol after being isolated for several days. "Our food supply was gone, our gasoline requirements are now reserved for priority emergency vehicles," he said in an interview.

He said funeral parlors were also running low on coffins, with 54 deaths so far recorded in his city alone.

An ABS-CBN report said meat, poultry and fish vendors had just enough food to sell for Monday while rice and vegetable supplies are expected to last for the next two to three days. The perceived shortage has also led to an artificial increase in vegetable prices, with some vendors selling lettuch for P200 a kilo instead of P70/kilo.

Petron and Caltex gas stations in Baguio City were closed for business on Monday after petrol supply ran out while only two of the five Shell station in the city serviced customers. Motorists were also limited to buying 10 liters of petrol per vehicle.

Shell management said that unless fresh suppies come in, they only have enough petrol supply for the next two days.

Dozens of towns in Northern Luzon remained flooded Monday after authorities were forced to release water from near bursting dams on Friday due to a week of rains dumped by tropical storm Parma.

The relentless rain loosened saturated soil in mountain communities in the Cordillera Administrative Region, triggering a deadly torrent of mud and rocks late last week that swallowed houses and roads.

The death toll in the region had so far reached 275, according to police there.

Pepeng (Parma) pummelled the northern region for a week before moving on the weekend into the South China Sea.

It first hit as a typhoon on October 3, exactly one week after tropical storm Ondoy (Ketsana) dumped the heaviest rains in more than 40 years on Manila to the south on Luzon island.

Ketsana has left 337 people dead, with the death toll from both storms surpassing 630. Another 300,000 people out of the over six million people affected remain in evacuation camps. With Agence France-Presse