Hagupit strikes in eastern Philippines
LEGAZPI, Philippines — Typhoon Hagupit knocked out power in entire coastal provinces, mowed down trees and sent more than 650,000 people into shelters, but no major damage or casualties had been reported as the storm weakened this morning.
Hagupit slammed into Eastern Samar province in the central Philippines late Saturday and lost strength as it barreled westward across a string of island provinces.
It was packing maximum sustained winds of 87 mph and gusts of 106 mph, considerably weaker than its peak power but still a potentially deadly storm, according to forecasters.
Traumatized by Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing last year in the central region that’s being partly whipped by Hagupit, more than 650,000 people readily fled to about 1,000 emergency shelters and safer ground.
The government, backed by the military, launched preparations to prevent casualties.
While authorities have expressed relief so far, they were quick to warn that Hagupit was still on course to barrel across three major central islands before starting to blow away Tuesday into the South China Sea.
Several typhoon-lashed eastern villages isolated by downed telephone and power lines were out of contact, Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman said.
“It’s too early to tell,” Philippine Red Cross Secretary-General Gwendolyn Pang said. “Let’s cross our fingers that it will stay that way. It’s too close to Christmas.”
In Luzon Island’s southern Bicol region, the storm toppled trees, triggered mudslides and sent waves across seaside roadways.
“There are many trees that have toppled, some of them on the highway,” police Senior Inspector Alex Robin said by phone late Saturday from Dolores, hours before Hagupit made landfall. “We are totally in the dark here. The only light comes from flashlights.”
Robin said about 600 families had hunkered down in Dolores’ three-story municipal hall, one of many emergency shelters in the town.
Eastern Samar province Rep. Ben Evardone said electricity also was knocked out early Saturday in Borongan city, about 43 miles south of Dolores, where the government has set up a command center for rescue and relief operations headed by Interior Secretary Mar Roxas.
Evardone said the strong winds also felled trees and ripped off roofing sheets.
“You can hear the whistling of the wind,” he said. “Everybody is in fear because of what happened during [Haiyan]. We can already feel the wrath of the typhoon. Everybody is praying.”
Army troops deployed to supermarkets and major roads in provinces in the typhoon’s path to prevent looting and chaos and clear debris, all of which slowed the government’s response last year, said Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang, head of the Philippines’ 120,000-strong military.
“We’re on red alert, so the entire armed forces is being mobilized for this typhoon,” Catapang said at a news conference.
While unlikely to reach Haiyan’s strength, forecasters said Hagupit’s maximum sustained winds and gusts were strong enough to set off deadly storm surges and landslides and cause heavy damage to communities and agriculture.
In the central city of Tacloban, where Haiyan’s storm surges killed thousands of people and leveled villages, news of the approaching typhoon rekindled painful memories.
Many residents fled to storm shelters, a sports stadium and churches even before authorities urged them to evacuate.
A Red Cross official in Tacloban wrote on Twitter that the city had seen flooding and damage to some buildings, including one of the relief agency’s storehouses. Mayor Alfred Romualdez of Tacloban told the Philippines broadcaster ABS-CBN that as of 3 a.m. today there were no casualties in the city.
Around 650,000 people have been moved to safety, including in Tacloban.
A U.N. humanitarian agency spokesman, Denis McClean, said in Geneva that it was one of the largest peacetime evacuations in Philippine history.
Nearly 100 domestic flights have been canceled and inter-island ferry services suspended, stranding thousands of people.
Disaster preparations widened after two agencies tracking the typhoon closely — the U.S. military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii and the Philippine weather agency — predicted different directions for Hagupit.
The U.S. agency said Hagupit may veer northwest after coming inland and sweep past the southern edge of the capital, Manila.
The Philippine agency, known by its acronym PAGASA, projected a more southern path.
On Saturday, the warning center downgraded Hagupit from “super typhoon” status, and the Japan Meteorological Agency also lowered its designation from the highest level, “violent,” to “very strong.”
Information for this article was contributed by Jim Gomez of The Associated Press and by Austin Ramzy of The New York Times.