He said the national disaster council had dispatched a helicopter to Casiguran on Tuesday to assess the damage and check for casualties.
Gerardo Noveras, the governor of Aurora, said on ABS CBN television that the road to Casiguran should be reopened on Tuesday afternoon.
Hundreds of people die each year in the Philippines from the roughly 20 typhoons or tropical storms that strike the country annually.
But when Utor hit land, its wind gusts were reaching 200 kilometres (124 miles) an hour, making it the strongest storm this year, according to the weather bureau.
“This was nearly as powerful as Bopha,” Balido said, referring to the world’s deadliest typhoon last year that hit the southern Philippines in December, killing more than 1,000 people.
Utor flattened at least 1,577 houses and more than 30,000 people were in temporary shelters on Tuesday, according to the disaster council.
However this tally did not include many people in the three devastated towns in Aurora province, as authorities had not been able to assess the damage there.
The two confirmed fatalities were a man who drowned and another who was buried by a landslide.
Of the 11 people listed as missing, one was a woman swept away as she stood crying for help atop her house that was swept away by a swollen river.
A local television crew filmed the woman as she was swallowed up by the river.
“The community was evacuated before the onslaught of the typhoon but she refused to be evacuated,” said Norma Talosig, civil defence chief for the northeastern Philippines.
The Red Cross listed a third death but gave no details.
Talosig said the typhoon had also caused severe damage to farms in the province of Isabela, one of the country’s top rice and corn producers.
On Tuesday, Utor was in the South China Sea tracking towards southern China, according to the Hong Kong Observatory.
It said Utor’s wind gusts were reaching 155 kilometres (96 miles) an hour.
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