On November 17, 2024, trees and buildings were damaged by super typhoon Manyi in the Catanduanes province of the Philippines.
Philippine Red Cross | via Reuters
A powerful typhoon ripped through the northern Philippines on Sunday, destroying homes and causing tidal waves that forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee to emergency shelters. This is the sixth major storm to hit the country in less than a month.
Typhoon Manyi hit the eastern province of Catanduanes on Saturday night with winds of up to 195 kph (125 mph) and gusts of up to 240 kph (149 mph). The country’s meteorological agency warned of “potentially catastrophic and life-threatening conditions” in states along the path.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the typhoon, which was expected to sweep northwest across northern Luzon, the archipelago’s most populous region, on Sunday. The metropolitan area of ​​Metro Manila is likely to be spared a direct hit, but along with remote areas, it has been placed under a storm watch and warned of dangerous coastal storm surges.
“There was not much rain, but the wind was very strong and it was making an eerie howling sound,” Catanduanes city disaster prevention official Roberto Monterolla told The Associated Press by phone. “Along the main road here, the storm surge reached more than 7 meters near the beach huts. It was really scary.”
The entire province of Catanduanes is without power after the typhoon toppled trees and utility poles, and disaster response teams are assessing how many more homes were damaged in addition to those damaged in previous storms. he said.
“Apart from food, we need tin roofs and other construction materials. Villagers here say they are still recovering from past storms and have been stranded again by this typhoon,” Monterola said. spoke. Nearly half of the island state’s 80,000 people have evacuated to evacuation centers.
Catanduanes authorities were so concerned about the approaching typhoon that they threatened to arrest vulnerable villagers if they did not comply with orders to evacuate to a safer location. More than 750,000 people were evacuated to emergency shelters such as churches and shopping malls after Manyi and the previous two storms that hit mainly the northern Philippines, said Civil Defense Assistant Secretary Cesar Idio and other state officials. did.
A series of rare storms and typhoons hit Luzon in just three weeks, killing more than 160 people, affecting 9 million people, and causing severe damage to residential communities, infrastructure and agricultural land. The Philippines may have to import more. Rice is the staple food of most Filipinos. As Manyi approaches, an emergency meeting was held in which President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. urged cabinet members and state officials to prepare for the “worst-case scenario.”
At least 26 domestic and two international airports were temporarily closed, and interisland ferry and cargo operations were halted due to rough seas, leaving thousands of passengers and commuters stranded, the Philippine Civil Aviation Authority and Coast Guard said. Ta.
Manila’s treaty ally, the United States, along with Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, provided cargo planes and other storm support to shore up the government’s busy disaster response agency. Last month, the first major storm, Trami, dumped one to two months’ worth of rain on several towns in just 24 hours, killing scores of people.
The Philippines is hit by about 20 typhoons and storms every year. Frequent earthquakes and more than a dozen active volcanoes make it one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world.
