Super Typhoon Mangkhut smashed through the Philippines on Saturday, as the biggest storm to hit the region this year claimed the lives of its first victims and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes. Roughly four million people were in the path of destruction the storm slashed through the northern tip of Luzon island, leaving at least four dead.
“As we go forward, this number will go higher,” Ricardo Jalad, head of the national civil defense office, told reporters, referring to the death toll. As the powerful storm left the Southeast Asian archipelago and barrelled towards densely populated Hong Kong and southern China, Philippine authorities began sending search teams to remote areas.
The extent of the storm’s destruction began to emerge later on Saturday, with reports of rain-soaked hillsides collapsing, torrents of out-of-control floodwaters and people being rescued from inundated homes. Just over 105,000 people fled their homes in the largely rural, agricultural region, seeking to escape the fury of the
massive typhoon.
Mangkhut was packing sustained winds of 170 kilometers (105 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 260 km per hour as it left the Philippines. The dead were two women killed in the landslide, a girl who drowned and a security guard crush by a falling wall. In addition to the four killed in the Philippines, a woman was swept out to sea in Taiwan. Officials assessing damage
As the powerful storm left the Southeast Asian archipelago and barrelled towards densely populated Hong Kong and southern China, search teams in the Philippines began surveying the provinces that suffered a direct hit. We believe there has been a lot of damage,” said Social Welfare Secretary Virginia Orogo as thousands of evacuees took refuge in emergency shelters. An average of 20 typhoons and storms lash the Philippines each year, killing hundreds of people and leaving millions in near-perpetual poverty.
Storm surge warnings
Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from coastal areas of the Philippines following major storm surge warnings. A landslide blocked a major highway outside Baguio on Saturday, the city’s mayor said, while flooding was reported in several provinces and parts of the capital Manila. Authorities in some areas of northern Luzon turned off power as a precaution and said some residents in high-risk areas chose to ride out the storm to protect homes from looters.
Rogelio Sending, a government official in Cagayan, where the storm first made landfall, said there were province-wide power and communication outages and reports of uprooted trees blocking roads. “This makes the clearing operations really difficult,” he said by phone. The Philippines is still haunted by the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan, which killed more than 6,300 people in central areas of the country in 2013, mostly due to huge storm surges.
But authorities say they were better prepared this time in terms of evacuating and informing high-risk communities. “I talked to the president last night. His clear and concise marching order was ‘Save lives, save lives,'” said Francis Tolentino, the government’s disaster response coordinator and adviser to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
Source: Trtworld