Typhoon Haima hammers Hong Kong
Philippines faces major clean- up after storm kills 12 and devastates farm land
Typhoon Haima, the strongest storm to hit the Philippines in three years, killed at least 12 people and inundated vast tracts of rice and corn fields, officials in Manila said yesterday, before it took aim at Hong Kong.
Philippine authorities said they were assessing the extent of damage to infrastructure and crops, but confirmed that thousands of hectares of farmland were destroyed in northern provinces.
Eight of the victims were from the Cordillera region, said Ricardo Jalad, chief of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, citing reports the agency received from provincial officials.
In Cagayan alone, where the super t yphoon made landfall late on Wednesday with destructive 225km/ h winds and heavy rain, between 50,000- 60,000 hectares of rice fields were flattened and flooded, said the provincial Governor Manuel Mamba.
“It was like we were hit by another Yolanda,” he told a radio station, referring to the 2013 super t yphoon known internationally as Haiyan which killed at least 6000 people and destroyed billions of pesos worth of property.
Hong Kong shut all but essential services in the global financial hub as the storm approached.
Haima lashed the financial hub with rain and wind gusts of up to 96km/ h. Schools and offices were shut and trading on the stock market suspended after the third most serious storm signal was hoisted, leaving an eerie calm in the streets of the normally bustling city.
Nearly 700 flights to and from the city’s international airport were cancelled or delayed.
In the Chinese city of Shenzhen, authorities ordered schools, markets and factories to close, halted public transportation and evacuated some areas.
Although storms are a part of life in the north of the Philippines, many vil- lagers were still horrified by Haima’s fury.
“In my age, I’m 60 years old, this is the strongest t yphoon I have ever seen,” village councillor Willie Cabalteja said in Vigan city in Ilocos Sur province. “We haven’t slept. Trees were forced down, houses lost their roofs and fences and metal sheets were flying around all night.”
The extent of damage in Cagayan, about 500km north of Manila, where the typhoon made landfall, was evident in overturned vans, toppled or leaning electric posts and debris blocking roads.
Most stores, their window panes shattered and canopies shredded by the wind, were closed.
In northern Ilocos Sur province, rice fields resembled brown lakes under waist- high floodwaters, although clean- up operations had started.
The region is still recovering from a typhoon last weekend that killed t wo people and displaced tens of thousands of villagers.
President Rodrigo Duterte, on a state visit to China, urged people to heed orders by disaster agencies.