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MANILA – The Philippines evacuated about a million people on Saturday (October 31) as it prepared for the strongest typhoon to hit anywhere in the world this year.
Typhoon Goni, known locally as Rolly, hits the eastern part of the main island of Luzon, with winds of up to 295 kilometers per hour, approaching the strength of Typhoon Haiyan which killed more than 6,300 people in November 2013.
“The strength of this typhoon is not a joke,” Gremil Naz, a local disaster official in Albay province, told DZBB radio station.
Goni is forecast to traverse the same regions still reeling from the fury of another typhoon, Molave, which last week killed 22 people, flooded provinces in regions south of the capital Manila and caused at least 1.810 million pesos (51 million pesos). of dollars). in damage to farmland.
Goni is expected to weaken slightly when it makes landfall in the eastern provinces of Catanduanes and Camarines in the early hours of Sunday (November 1) and cuts a road very close to Manila. But it will continue to have maximum winds of about 250 km / h.
Typhoon alerts have been issued in Luzon and the eastern part of the central Philippines. The meteorological office warned of heavy rain, storm surges of up to 3 meters, flooding and landslides.
Ricardo Jalad, executive director of the national disaster agency, told a press conference that some 794,000 people living in coastal and landslide-prone communities in Albay had already been evacuated.
Don Culvera, a disaster response official, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that about 160,000 in Camarines had fled their homes to take refuge in emergency shelters.
In Manila and the nearby Bulacan province, roughly 1,000 Covid-19 patients housed in large isolation tents could be transferred to hotels and hospitals, Jalad said.
The Philippines has the second highest number of Covid-19 infections and deaths in Southeast Asia, only after Indonesia, with 380,729 cases and 7,221 deaths.
Many more in southern Luzon have been advised to prepare to evacuate.
State volcanologists, meanwhile, warned of possible mudflows in three active volcanoes.
The Philippine Red Cross said it has placed rescue vehicles, first aid volunteers, emergency response teams and relief items, and is helping communities before the typhoon makes landfall.
The Coast Guard has closed more than a dozen ports, most in the Bicol region, leaving some 1,500 stranded.
Harry Roque, spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte, said that the country’s main disaster response agency is now on red alert and that the Ministry of Social Welfare has already stockpiled relief items and allocated relief funds worth some 870 million euros. pesos.
Goni is the third typhoon to hit the Philippines in three weeks. Another storm, Atsani, is set to hit the archipelago next week.
The Philippines is the first major land mass off the Pacific cyclone belt.
It is hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year.
Typhoon season generally begins in June and ends in November. But in recent years, the strongest typhoons have hit the country as the year draws to a close in November and December.
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