A strong typhoon hit the southeastern Philippines on Thursday, toppling trees, tearing off tin roofs and knocking out power because it blew through island provinces where nearly 100,000 people were evacuated.
Coast guard personnel rescued residents stranded in chest-deep water within the southern province, where heavy rains flooded villages with brownish water. Footage from the southern city of Cagayan de Oro shows two rescuers struggling to maintain a one-month-old baby in a sink above the water, shielded from wind and rain by an umbrella.
Forecasters said Typhoon Rai further strengthened with sustained winds of 195 kilometers (121 miles) per hour and gusts of as much as 270 km/h (168 miles per hour) because it blew from the Pacific Ocean towards the Siargao islands. There were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage.
“I am afraid and praying here at home that it will end now. The wind outside is so strong that it’s cutting down trees,” Teresa Lozano, a resident of the eastern town of MacArthur in the coastal province of Leyte, told DZMM radio by phone, adding that the roofs of nearby houses were damaged and her farming village lost electricity.
Disaster response authorities said the typhoon, which is 400 km wide and 248 miles long, has around 10,000 villages in its expected path and is one of the strongest to hit the country this year.
The Coast Guard said it had grounded all ships, stranding nearly 4,000 passengers and ferry and cargo ship workers in dozens of southern and central ports. Several flights were canceled, mostly domestic, and schools and workplaces were closed in the most vulnerable areas.
The government’s disaster response agency said more than 98,000 people had been evacuated to safety. Crowding in evacuation centers complicated efforts to maintain a safe distance between people after authorities detected the country’s first infections caused by an omicron variant of the coronavirus. Increased vaccinations have also been suspended in provinces where storms may occur.
Survivors of Typhoon Haiyan who grew up and joined the climate battle
Survivors of Typhoon Haiyan who grew up and joined the climate battle
The Philippines is among the hardest-hit by the pandemic in Southeast Asia, with more than 2.8 million confirmed infections and more than 50,000 deaths. Quarantine restrictions have been eased in recent weeks and more businesses have been allowed to reopen after a stepped-up vaccination campaign helped reduce infections to a few hundred from more than 26,000 in September. But the detection of omicron cases this week has raised alarm bells and the government has renewed calls for people to avoid crowds and get vaccinated immediately.
Governor Ben Evardone of Eastern Samar province said he had suspended vaccinations in his region of nearly half a million people because of the typhoon. More than 70 percent of the province’s rural population has received at least one vaccine shot, and Evardone expressed concern that some vaccines stored in Eastern Samar would expire in a few months.
He said overcrowding was unavoidable in the limited number of evacuation centers in his province that had been moved to safe locations.
“You can’t maintain social distancing, it’s going to be really difficult,” Evardone said. “Our work involves grouping evacuated families. For precautionary reasons, we do not mix different people in the same place.”
About 20 storms and typhoons hit the Philippines yearly. The archipelago can be positioned within the seismically energetic “Ring of Fire” region within the Pacific, making it one of the vital disaster-prone countries on the planet.
