Typhoon ravages the Philippines, causing tidal waves and displacing many

MANILA — A powerful typhoon destroyed homes, caused sky-high tidal waves and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee to emergency shelters as the storm crossed the northern Philippines on Sunday in the sixth major storm to hit the country in less than a month.

Typhoon Man-yi hit the eastern island province of Catanduanes on Saturday night with sustained winds of up to 200 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 230 kilometers per hour. The country’s weather agency warned of a “potentially catastrophic and life-threatening situation” in the provinces along its path.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from the typhoon, which was expected to blow northwestward across northern Luzon, the archipelago’s most populous region, on Sunday. Metro Manila’s capital region was likely to be spared a direct hit, but, along with outlying regions, was under a gale warning and warned of dangerous storm surges on the coast.

“The rain was minimal, but the wind was very strong and had an eerie howling sound,” Roberto Monterola, a disaster management official in Catanduanes, told the Associated Press by phone. “Along a main boulevard here, tidal waves reached more than 7 meters near the houses on the coast. It looked really scary.”

The entire province of Catanduanes was without power after the typhoon toppled trees and electricity poles, and disaster response teams were checking how many more houses had been damaged in addition to those affected by earlier storms, he said.

“In addition to food, we also need tin roofs and other building materials. Villagers here tell us that they still haven’t gotten up from the last storm and are pinned down again by this typhoon,” Monterola said. Nearly half of the island province’s 80,000 residents took shelter in evacuation centers.

Catanduanes officials were so concerned as the typhoon approached that they threatened vulnerable villagers with arrest if they did not follow orders to evacuate. More than 750,000 people took refuge in emergency shelters, including churches and a mall, due to Man-yi and two previous storms, mainly in the northern Philippines, Civil Protection Bureau Cesar Idio and other provincial officials said.

The rare back-to-back storms and typhoons that hit Luzon in just three weeks killed more than 160 people, affected 9 million and caused such extensive damage to residential communities, infrastructure and agricultural lands that the Philippines may need to import more rice . a staple food for most Filipinos. At an emergency meeting as Man-yi approached, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. asked his Cabinet and provincial officials to brace for “the worst-case scenario.”

At least 26 domestic airports and two international airports were briefly closed and ferry and cargo services between the islands were suspended due to rough seas, leaving thousands of passengers and commuters stranded, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines and the Coast Guard said.

The United States, Manila’s treaty ally, along with Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, provided cargo planes and other storm assistance to bolster the government’s overwhelmed disaster response agencies. Last month, the first major storm, Trami, killed dozens of people after one to two months of rain fell in several cities in just 24 hours.

The Philippines is affected by approx 20 typhoons and storms every year. It is often hit by earthquakes and has more than a dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world.

Gomez writes for the Associated Press.