Philippines prepares for typhoon
MANILA: Philippine authorities evacuated more areas yesterday and warned an estimated 5.2 million people in the path of a powerful typhoon to stay indoors, as the country braced for heavy rain and damage to infrastructure and crops.
Super Typhoon Mangkhut is expected to barrel through the northernmost tip of the Philippines this morning, carrying 205kmh winds and gusts of up to 255kmh that it has maintained since it struck Micronesia earlier in the week.
More than 9000 people have been moved to temporary shelters as Mangkhut, locally known as Ompong, makes its way towards the rice and cornproducing provinces of Cagayan and Isabela, where it is forecast to make landfall.
Weather forecasters warned of destructive storm surges as high as 6m in coastal villages in the typhoon’s path.
Second and third contingents of rescue teams were being prepared, in case firstresponders get into trouble themselves, and disaster officials said tens of thousands more people might have to be moved.
‘‘My appeal is that we need to heed the advice of the authorities. Stay indoors,’’ said presidential adviser Francis Tolentino, the government’s main coordinator for disaster response.
The capital, Manila, and more than three dozen northern and central provinces have been placed under storm warning signals. Classes have been suspended and government offices shut early in more than 600 places, while military personnel, medical and emergency response teams were put on standby.
The coastguard said about 5000 passengers were stranded at several ports by the impending storm, which would head on towards southern China and Vietnam.
In the Philippines, the strongest impact could be felt in 10 provinces now under storm signal 3, a notch below the highest level. Nearly 1 million people in affected areas live below the poverty line.
‘‘The concerns here are landslides and infrastructure being washed away,’’ said Junie Cua, governor of Quirino province, on the main island of Luzon.
‘‘We have made preparations for those eventualities by prepositioning our relief goods and having our equipment on standby.’’
Authorities are taking extra precautions as they draw comparison with Typhoon Haiyan, which devastated central areas of the archipelago in 2013 and killed 6300 people, many in storm surges that reached as high as 8m. Damage to crops in a worstcase scenario could reach about 157,000 tonnes of paddy rice and about 257,000 tonnes of corn, worth 13.5 billion pesos ($NZ380.2 million), the agriculture ministry said.
That could result in tightness in the domestic rice supplies at a time when retail prices are already high, which would compound worries about inflation. — Reuters