Typhoon floods villages, rips off roofs and damages two domestic airports in northern Philippines

Manila, Philippines Typhoon Yinxing ravaged the northern Philippines with floods and landslides before blowing out of the country on Friday, damaging two airports and exacerbating a disaster caused by successive storms that hit in recent weeks.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from Yinxing, the 13th major storm to hit the disaster-prone Southeast Asian archipelago this year.

The typhoon, locally named Marce, was last tracked over the South China Sea, about 100 kilometers west of the northern Philippine province of Ilocos Norte, packing sustained winds of up to 150 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 150 kilometers per hour. 205 km/h (127 mph), according to government forecasters. It is expected to weaken further before hitting Vietnam.

The typhoon flooded villages, toppled trees and power poles and damaged homes and buildings in Cagayan province, where Yinxing made landfall Thursday afternoon, provincial officials said. More than 40,000 villagers were evacuated to safer ground in the province.

In the northernmost island province of Batanes, Governor Marilou Cayco said fierce winds and rain from Yinxing blew roofs off houses and damaged seaports and two domestic airport terminals.

More details on the damage, including in two northern mountain towns hit by landslides, were expected after the typhoon-hit provinces completed an assessment, officials said.

The new damage will complicate recovery efforts from two powerful storms that battered the northern region in recent weeks.

Tropical Storm Trami and Typhoon Kong-rey have killed at least 151 people in the Philippines and affected nearly 9 million others, mainly in the northern and central provinces. More than 14 billion pesos ($241 million) worth of rice, corn and other crops and infrastructure were damaged.

Trami dumped one to two months of rain in some regions in just 24 hours. At least 61 people have been killed in floods and landslides in the worst-hit province of Batangas, south of Manila.

More than 630,000 people were still displaced as of Thursday as a result of Trami and Kong-rey, officials said, including 172,000 who remained in emergency shelters as Yinxing blew through the country’s mountainous north.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has decided not to attend next week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Peru to focus on recovery efforts, Communications Secretary Cesar Chavez said.

In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones on record, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, leveled entire villages and caused ships to run aground and crash into homes in the central Philippines. The archipelago is also located in a region frequently affected by earthquakes and has more than a dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world.