Powerful typhoon ruins Christmas
Deadly Nock-Ten bears down on capital city
BATANGAS: A powerful typhoon that spoiled Christmas Day in parts of the Philippines, leaving at least four people dead and destroying homes, roared over a congested region near Manila yesterday with slightly weaker but still-fierce winds, officials said.
Typhoon Nock-Ten cut power to five provinces at the height of Christmas celebrations and displaced tens of thousands of villagers and travellers in Asia’s largest Catholic nation.
A farmer died after being pinned by a fallen tree in Quezon province and three other villagers, including a couple who were swept by a flash flood, died in Albay province, southeast of Manila, after the typhoon made landfall in Casiguran province on Sunday night, police said.
Nock-Ten, locally known as Nina, then blew westward across mountainous and island provinces, damaging homes, uprooting trees and knocking down communications.
Although it had weakened slightly, the typhoon still had sustained winds of up to 130kph and gusts of 215kph, government forecasters said, as it blew over the heavily populated provinces of Batangas and Cavite, south of Manila, yesterday morning. It was expected to exit over the South China Sea later in the day.
A cargo ship with an unspecified number of crewmen radioed for help as their vessel started to sink off Batangas, while another ran aground and turned on its side in the province’s Mabini town, the coast guard said, adding that it sent vessels to rescue the crewmen of both ships.
The storm was one of the strongest to hit the Philippines since Typhoon Haiyan left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and displaced more than five million in 2014.
But officials in some provinces found it difficult to convince people to abandon their Christmas celebrations and head for the shelters before the storm hit. Some officials said they had to impose forced evacuations.
“Some residents just refused to leave their homes even when I warned them
that you can face what amounts to a death penalty,” Cedric Daep, a senior disaster-response official in Albay, said on the telephone.
Shopping malls and stores were ordered to close early on Christmas Day to encourage people to remain indoors, “but at the height of the typhoon many cars were still being driven around and people were out walking,” Mr Daep said. “We warned them enough, but we just can’t control their mind.”
Officials in Albay, where more than 150,000 villagers were displaced by the typhoon, declared a “state of calamity” on Sunday to allow faster disbursement of emergency funds.
About 20 typhoons and storms lash the Philippines each year. In the past 65 years, seven typhoons have struck the country on Christmas Day, according to the government’s weather agency.
Tens of thousands of villagers, forced to spend Christmas in crowded and powerless emergency shelters, started to return home yesterday to deal with the damage.
“They have left the evacuation centers and we’re seeing the sun again,” Ann Ongjoco, mayor of the town of Guinobatan in Albay, one of five provinces that lost electricity, said by phone.
But she said her town, where more than 17,600 villagers fled to shelters in schools, will not be able to resume the holiday celebrations because of the post-typhoon mess. “Many houses made of light materials were destroyed,” she said.
The civil defence office said the capital could suffer “heavy to intense rains, flashfloods and severe winds,” with rescue boats ready to be deployed in case rivers overflow.
“Our local disaster councils are on red alert. We have pre-positioned relief supplies and rescue and [road] clearing equipment in Metro Manila,” said Mina Marasigan, spokeswoman for the country’s disaster monitoring council.
The coast guard on Sunday ordered the beaches south of Manila to be cleared of holidaymakers by Monday, while residents of the capital’s seaside slums were warned to leave their homes.
The storm previously cut off electricity to millions and forced government agencies to order evacuations of whole communities in the eastern region of Bicol which felt the brunt of the storm on Christmas day.
In the Bicol town of Ligao, many streets and farms were in ankle-deep water while some homes remained caked in mud left by flooding.
Masseuse Erna Angela Pintor, 20, said she and her family spent a sleepless Christmas in fear as the strong winds ripped off part of their roof.
Their neighbours living near the river bank sought refuge in their home as the waters rose to their chests, she recalled, though her own family was luckier.
“The floods [last night] only reached to our knees. Thank goodness the current wasn’t that strong,” she said.
“This was supposed to be a celebration but we cannot celebrate. This is a sad Christmas for us.
“No one [in the family] died but a lot of our neighbours’ homes were washed away.”
Ms Marasigan said hundreds of people in Bicol celebrated Christmas day in evacuation centres where many had to make do with emergency food packs.
Some local officials had offered roast pigs, the traditional Philippine holiday fare known locally as lechon, to entice constituents to go to evacuation centres, Ms Marasigan said.
“Government workers in the Bicol region, particularly those involved in disaster relief and operations, are working round-the-clock even on Christmas Day as typhoon Nina maintains its strength and continues to pose a serious threat to Bicol region,” President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman Martin Andanar said in a statement.
Some 20 typhoons or lesser storms strike the Philippines each year on average, routinely killing hundreds of people, and Bicol is often the first region to be hit.