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Tag Archives: Typhoon
Super Typhoon Noru makes landfall in Philippines; authorities on alert
Though the storm was expected to weaken into Monday as it crossed over the main island of Luzon, which includes Manila, and made landfall, the officials said it was “highly likely” to “remain a typhoon while crossing the landmass.”
As Noru approached the Philippines, its peak winds increased from 60 to 160 mph in 24 hours as it transformed from a tropical storm to the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. This leap was among the fastest 24-hour intensification rates on record for any tropical cyclone.
Scientists say human-caused climate change is increasing the potential for such rapid strengthening.
In Manila, rescue workers on Sunday were preparing rubber boats and life vests as authorities started evacuating people from coastal areas.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Sunday canceled classes in public schools and closed down non-emergency government buildings in a bid to keep people indoors and out of the storm’s path, his office said on social media.
Local services were disrupted and dozens of international and domestic flights were canceled because of the weather, including a United Airlines flight to Guam, authorities said.
The U.S. Embassy rescheduled all consular appointments for Monday in Manila. Curtis S. Chin, former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, said his thoughts were with those in the Philippines as he shared a visualization of the storm rapidly growing in strength between Saturday and Sunday.
The typhoon is forecast to bring large waves, torrential rains and wind gusts of up to about 127 mph to the northern island of Luzon — home to a population of more than 64 million people — over the next 24 hours.
“Under these conditions, scattered to widespread flooding and rain-induced landslides are expected, especially in areas that are highly or very highly susceptible to these hazards as identified in hazard maps and in localities with significant antecedent rainfall,” the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration said.
At 5:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, the agency said the eye of the storm had made landfall near Burdeos, a municipal area in the Quezon province of Polillo Islands.
It forecast “a high to very high risk” of storm surges of about 10 feet or more in the low-lying and exposed coastal areas of northern Quezon, the Polillo Islands and Aurora. It said to expect “heavy to intense with at times torrential rains” through Monday morning over Metro Manila, which includes Quezon City, nearby provinces and the north of Quezon.
After crossing Luzon, Noru is forecast to emerge in the South China Sea and regain strength early this week before making a second landfall in central Vietnam.
Noru is one of many tropical storms to hit the Philippines this year. The capital and northern provinces are recovering from a cyclone last month that caused floods and landslides and killed three people, according to Reuters.
One of the strongest storms ever to hit Canada slammed into Nova Scotia’s coastline on Saturday, leaving much of Nova Scotia and nearly all of Prince Edward Island without power. Former hurricane Fiona is the lowest-pressure land-falling storm on record in Canada, according to the Canadian Hurricane Center, which also reported hurricane-force gusts battering the area.
Meanwhile, a tropical storm known as Ian churned through the central Caribbean, a journey that weather experts say could culminate in a collision with Florida on Thursday as a hurricane.
Jason Samenow, Matthew Cappucci, Selena Ross and Sydney Page contributed to this report.
Super Typhoon Karding: Noru strengthening as it heads for Philippines
The storm rapidly intensified in the early hours of Sunday, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, strengthening from a 140 kph (85 mph) typhoon to a 250 kph (155 mph) super typhoon in just six hours.
The forecast from JTWC sees further strengthening in the hours leading up to landfall and the storm is projected to be the equivalent of a Category 5 typhoon by the time it hits Luzon.
The super typhoon is forecast to bring large waves and storm surge, torrential rains, and winds in excess of 200 kph to Luzon over the next 24 hours.
The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration has issued a signal warning level four for the Polillo Islands in anticipation of extensive damage.
Level two and three warnings are in place for much of Luzon, including metro Manila.
Rare ‘special warning’ issued as violent typhoon makes landfall in Japan | Japan
Typhoon Nanmadol made landfall in south-western Japan on Sunday night, with authorities urging millions of people to take shelter from the powerful storm’s high winds and torrential rain.
The storm officially made landfall at about 7pm local time (11am BST) as its eyewall – the region just outside the eye – arrived near Kagoshima, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.
It was packing gusts of up to almost 150mph and had already dumped up to 500mm of rain in less than 24 hours on parts of the south-western Kyushu region.
At least 20,000 people spent the night in shelters in Kyushu’s Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures, where the JMA has issued a rare “special warning” – an alert that is issued only when it forecasts conditions seen once in several decades.
The national broadcaster NHK, which collates information from local authorities, said more than 7 million people had been told to move to shelters or take refuge in sturdy buildings to ride out the storm.
The evacuation warnings are not mandatory, and authorities have at times struggled to persuade people to move to shelters before extreme weather. They sought to drive home their concerns about the weather system throughout the weekend.
“Please stay away from dangerous places, and please evacuate if you feel even the slightest hint of danger,” the prime minister, Fumio Kishida, tweeted after convening a government meeting on the storm.
“It will be dangerous to evacuate at night. Please move to safety while it’s still light outside.”
The JMA has warned the region could face unprecedented danger from high winds, storm surges and torrential rain and called the storm “very dangerous”.
“Areas affected by the storm are seeing the sort of rain that has never been experienced before,” Hiro Kato, the head of the Weather Monitoring and Warning Centre, told reporters Sunday.
“Especially in areas under landslide warnings, it is extremely probable that some kinds of landslides are already happening.”
He urged “maximum caution even in areas where disasters do not usually happen”.
By Sunday evening, utility companies said nearly 200,000 homes across the region were without power. Trains, flights and ferries were cancelled until the passage of the storm, and even some convenience stores – generally open all hours and considered a lifeline in disasters – shut their doors.
“The southern part of the Kyushu region may see the sort of violent wind, high waves and high tides that have never been experienced before,” the JMA said on Sunday, urging people to exercise “the highest caution possible”.
On the ground, an official in Kagoshima’s Izumi city said conditions were deteriorating rapidly by Sunday afternoon.
“The wind has become extremely strong. Rain is falling hard, too,” he told AFP. “It’s a total white-out outside. Visibility is almost zero.”
The storm, which weakened slightly as it approached land, is expected to turn north-east and sweep up across Japan’s main island on Wednesday morning.
Japan is now in typhoon season and faces 20 such storms a year, routinely seeing heavy rains that cause landslides or flash floods. In 2019, Typhoon Hagibis smashed into Japan as it hosted the Rugby World Cup, claiming the lives of more than 100 people.
A year earlier, Typhoon Jebi shut down Kansai airport in Osaka, killing 14 people. And in 2018, floods and landslides killed more than 200 people in western Japan during the country’s annual rainy season.
Scientists say the climate crisis is increasing the severity of storms and causing extreme weather such as heatwaves, droughts and flash floods to become more frequent and intense.
S.Korea braces for ‘very strong’ typhoon, businesses curb operations
A woman makes her way in strong winds brought by Typhoon Hinnamnor in Naha, Okinawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo on September 4, 2022. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS
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SEOUL, Sept 5 (Reuters) – Typhoon Hinnamnor neared South Korea on Monday, forcing flight cancellations, suspensions of some business operations and closures of schools, as the country raised its typhoon-alert level to its highest.
Heavy rain and strong wind pounded the southern part of the country, with the typhoon travelling northward at a speed of 24 km per hour (15 mph). Hinnamnor is expected to make landfall southwest of the port city of Busan early on Tuesday, after reaching waters off Jeju Island later on Monday.
President Yoon Suk-yeol said on Monday he will be on emergency standby, a day after ordering authorities to put all efforts into minimising damage from the typhoon that has been classified as “very strong”.
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“Very strong winds and heavy rains are expected across the country through to Tuesday due to the typhoon, with very high waves expected in the coastal region along with storm and tsunami,” the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) said.
According to KMA’s forecast, Hinnamnor is headed northeast toward Sapporo, Japan.
South Korea classifies typhoons in four categories – normal, strong, very strong, super strong – and Hinnamnor is expected to reach the country as a “very strong” typhoon, according to the KMA. Typhoons under that classification have wind speeds of up to 53 metres per second.
Warnings have been issued across the southern cities, including Gwangju, Busan, Daegu and Ulsan, following that in the southern island of Jeju, while the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters on Sunday upgraded its typhoon alert level to the highest in its four-tier system, the first time in five years.
Busan city and its neighbouring areas have received rain throughout the weekend, with more rain forecast across the wider country for Monday and Tuesday.
No casualties have been reported so far, though more than 100 people have been evacuated and at least 11 facilities have been damaged by floods.
Steelmaker POSCO (005490.KS) told Reuters it is considering suspending some of its production processes in the city of Pohang on Tuesday, while SK Innovation (096770.KS), owner of South Korea’s top refiner SK Energy, said it asked carrier ships not to operate until the typhoon passes.
Responding to local media reports over the planned halts of their operations, South Korean shipbuilders Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (009540.KS), Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) (042660.KS) and Samsung Heavy Industries, DSME said a decision on suspending its operations will be made later on Monday.
Korean Air Lines (003490.KS) and Asiana Airlines (020560.KS) have cancelled most of their Monday flights to Jeju Island, according to their websites, while budget airlines such as Air Seoul and Jin Air have cancelled some of their flights.
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Reporting by Joori Roh; Additional reporting by Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Pacific Super Typhoon Hinnamnor becomes 2022’s strongest storm
Typhoons in the northwest Pacific are no different from hurricanes in the Atlantic; they are just called different things. To become a “super typhoon,” a storm must attain sustained winds of at least 150 mph.
As Hinnamnor barrels westward, the main body of Japan isn’t under any watches or warnings yet, but storm and high-wave warnings have been hoisted for the Daito Islands southeast of Okinawa, which are home to about 2,100 residents. The two small populated islands, Minamidaitojima and Kitadaitojima, sit about 200 feet above sea level at their highest point and are made out of limestone that built up atop ancient coral reefs.
The storm center is predicted to pass 93 miles south of Kadena Air Base on Okinawa at 7 p.m. local time Wednesday, producing up to 5 to 6 inches of rain and wind gusts up to 69 mph, according to Stars and Stripes.
It’s unclear just how close the storm will get to the more densely inhabited islands of Japan, as well as how the storm could eventually influence the weather in North America.
On Tuesday, the Japanese satellite Himawari-8 captured eerie views from above as the atmospheric buzz saw crawled west. The storm was a rather compact “annular cyclone,” characterized by one intense band of convection, or thunderstorm activity, surrounding a hollowed-out eye. Most hurricanes, typhoons and mature tropical cyclones feature a spiral of arcing squall lines and rain bands feeding into the center. Annular cyclones have a tighter radius of maximum winds and are more symmetrical, which helps them sustain their ferocity.
On the periphery of the typhoon, high, thin, wispy cirrus clouds can be seen on satellite radiating away from the center. That marks outflow, or exhaust at high altitudes as “spent” air expands away from the storm. The more already-processed air a storm evacuates from above it, the more the internal air pressure can plummet. That means the storm can in turn ingest more moisture-rich surface air in contact with the ocean. That fuels its sustenance or intensification.
Hinnamnor will probably maintain its strength for another day or so before the possibility of some modest wekaening.
Regardless, it’s already the strongest storm to spin up on Earth this year, and it could be very problematic wherever it strikes. In fact, it’s still expected to be at least a Category 3 storm five days from now.
It appears Hinnamnor may curve slightly southward, suppressed by high pressure to the north. This will probably keep its center just south of the island of Okinawa, but either way it’s much too close for comfort. The Japanese islands of Miyakojima, Tarama and Ishigaki appear to be at greater risk, with the closest pass probably sometime Friday or Saturday.
By then it will probably be faltering just a bit, and it may weaken to a Category 3 or low-end Category 4 storm, but severe impact is still expected. Weather models diverge markedly in their simulations thereafter but agree on the same basic premise: An approaching low-pressure system to the northwest will help scoot Hinnamnor northward.
The American (GFS) model then suggests Hinnamnor will slam early next week into South Korea, which endured disastrous flooding just three weeks ago. The European model favors a somewhat weaker Hinnamnor crossing over southern Japan with hurricane-force winds and copious rainfall.
It unfortunately appears that either scenario will continue to starve China of meaningful rainfall. The country has been facing a blistering heat wave and brutal drought that’s wreaking havoc on agricultural production.
There’s a remote possibility that Hinnamnor’s eventual absorption into a mid-latitude low-pressure system in seven to 10 days could bend the jet stream enough to even influence the weather in North America in the next two or three weeks. Picture throwing a rock into a gently flowing stream. That rock would affect the flow around it, resulting in ripples downstream. The crests and troughs of those ripples are analogous to high- and low-pressure systems. The specifics of how such a chain reaction may play out remain to be seen.
Hinnamnor’s fit of fury comes amid an anomalously quiet season for tropical cyclones in the northern hemisphere. Thus far the hemisphere’s tropical storm activity is only running about 53 percent of average, with half the number of expected major hurricane-strength systems.
In the meantime, meteorologists are also carefully monitoring a system in the Atlantic that will probably become Danielle and could make a run at hurricane strength next week. All indications point to it heading out to sea and sparing the U.S., though it could be something to monitor for Bermuda.
Jackson Hole, HKEX cancels morning session on typhoon warning
Qantas shares jump after the buyback announcement, earnings report
Shares of Australian airline Qantas jumped as much as 10% after the company reported earnings and announced plans for a share buyback.
The company posted an underlying loss before tax of 1.86 billion Australian dollars ($1.29 billion) for financial year of 2022.
“While the first three quarters of the year were defined by border closures and waves of uncertainty caused by Covid variants, the fourth quarter saw the highest sustained levels of travel demand since the start of the pandemic,” Qantas said in a statement.
It also announced plans to buy back shares worth up to 400 million Australian dollars, according to a filing.
“This is the first return to shareholders since 2019 and follows $1.4 billion of equity raised at the start of the pandemic,” the company said.
— Abigail Ng
CNBC Pro: Why Goldman Sachs thinks this FAANG stock is a sell
FAANG stocks delivered a mixed bag of second-quarter earnings, but Goldman Sachs is keeping its buy calls for nearly the entire grouping.
Just one stock is a sell, according to the bank.
Pro subscribers can read the story here.
— Zavier Ong
HKEX delays morning session due to Typhoon, to resume in afternoon
A restaurant’s windows at The Peak are taped up in Hong Kong on August 24, 2022, as Hong Kong Observatory issued a Typhoon Signal No. 8 earlier in the morning. HKEX canceled its morning session accordingly to the T8 issuance. (Photo by ISAAC LAWRENCE / AFP) (Photo by ISAAC LAWRENCE/AFP via Getty Images)
Isaac Lawrence | Afp | Getty Images
Hong Kong delayed its morning session due to the issuance of Typhoon Signal No. 8, the exchange announced on its website. The session’s likely to resume in the afternoon as the signal has now been downgraded to a T3.
“If Typhoon Signal No. 8 or above, or any announcement of Extreme Conditions, remains issued at 9:00 am, the morning trading sessions for all markets will be cancelled,” it says.
The HKEX’s guidance on its website on resuming its session says, “trading will begin on the first half hour approximately two hours after the discontinuation of the Typhoon Signal No. 8 or any Extreme Conditions announcement.”
—Jihye Lee
Bank of Korea raises rates
The Bank of Korea raised the nation’s benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 2.50%.
The move was in line with a poll by Reuters, where all but one of the 36 economists predicted the raise. One expected a 50 basis point hike.
That follows July’s 50 basis point raise — the biggest increase since the bank adopted the currency policy system in 1999, coming even as it expects gross domestic product growth “below the May forecast of 2.7%.”
The central bank’s Governor Rhee Chang-yong is expected to hold a press conference elaborating on today’s decision later in the morning.
— Jihye Lee
CNBC Pro: Morgan Stanley, UBS prefer these ‘cheap’ stocks, even in a recession
The risk of recession is growing, according to Canaccord Genuity’s analysts led by Tony Dwyer.
“Our indicators suggest a recession is increasingly likely as we move into next year, especially if the Fed continues to raise rates,” according to an Aug. 22 research note.
But according to Morgan Stanley and UBS, some stocks still look cheap — even with the risk of a slowdown priced in. Here are some of the stocks they prefer.
Pro subscribers can read the story here.
— Zavier Ong
Treasury yields rising on expectations of a hawkish Jackson Hole Fed meeting
Treasury yields are climbing ahead of the Federal Reserve’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo. on the idea that the market view has been more dovish than the central bank.
The three-day event starts Thursday, and the market is most focused on a Friday morning speech from Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.
The market has been anticipating a hawkish Fed based on comments ahead of the meeting. For instance, some Fed officials have been pushing back on a market view that the Fed could cut interest rates not long after it finishes raising them next year.
Yields, which move opposite price, have been moving higher on expectations that Powell will emphasize an aggressive policy of battling inflation and holding rates at high levels for longer. The 10-year yield reached 3.11% Wednesday morning, the highest since late June.
“I think what the bond market is looking to try to understand is Powell’s view of this policy reversal in 2023,” said Jim Caron of Morgan Stanley Investment Management.
— Patti Domm
Hong Kong rescuers searching for crew of a vessel that broke in half after being caught in typhoon
The Honk Kong Government Flying Service (GFS) said the vessel sunk some 300 kilometers, or 185 miles, southwest of the island.
In a post on its Instagram account, the GFS said it received a rescue request at 7:25 a.m. local time on Saturday. It said the vessel’s crew abandoned ship after it suffered substantial damage in the South China Sea.
A dramatic video from the rescue operation showed a crew member being pulled up on a rope into a helicopter from the ship as it was sinking.
Three crew members were rescued, but the fate of the remaining 27 people who were on board the ship remains unclear, GFS said, adding that harsh weather conditions were hampering the search and rescue operations.
Four helicopter and two fixed-wing aircraft sorties were deployed to the scene to conduct search and rescue operations, the GFS added.
The storm caused disruptions across the region, with flights canceled and some businesses closed due to strong winds and heavy downpours.
Hong Kong authorities have issued a warning over the typhoon on Thursday, during the highly anticipated visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The grand opening of a new Hong Kong Palace Museum that was meant to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the city’s handover from British to Chinese rule was postponed until Sunday because of the storm.
Chaba has made landfall in Guandong Province in China at about 3 p.m. local time (3 a.m. ET).
Super Typhoon Rai Leaves Miles of Wreckage in Philippines
MANILA — “The trees snapped like matchsticks.”
Ed Boysillo, 54, a municipal worker in Ubay, in the central Philippine province of Bohol, was describing the fearsome power of Super Typhoon Rai. The storm made its first landfall on Dec. 16, bringing torrential rains and packing winds up to 168 miles per hour, comparable to a Category 5 hurricane.
It blew away buildings, swelled rivers to overflow and forced more than seven million people to flee their homes. It cut off power, water and communications. It damaged critical infrastructure.
As of Tuesday morning, the storm had killed 397 people, injured 1,147 others and left 83 missing, official figures show. More than half a million people were still in evacuation centers or staying with friends and relatives.
The smell of death hung in the air in Bohol, where a family emerged from the wreckage to try to salvage a door festooned with Christmas decorations. An inflatable Santa Claus that had survived the lashing winds swayed forlornly in the air, its affable face a striking contrast to the destruction.
Antero Ramos, 68, who is from the village of Casare in Ubay, lost his wife, Tarsila Ramos, 61, and two of his daughters, Nita, 37, and Nenita, 28, in the storm.
“My wife decided that we should evacuate, so we decided to shelter in the bodega we used to store rice,” he said. “But as soon as we entered, the bodega collapsed on us,” he said.
The bodega’s caretaker also perished.
“This is a very sad Christmas,” Mr. Ramos said. “We had to bury them immediately because the funeral parlor could not get to the bodega because of the debris that was still on the roads.”
Rai, the international name for the storm (the local name is Odette), was the 15th typhoon to hit the country this year. The storm made eight more landfalls in multiple regions before veering away.
The Philippines sits on a typhoon belt and typically gets about 20 storms a year. After Rai’s devastation, the country’s Climate Change Commission called for urgent action at the local level “to build community resilience against extreme climate-related events and minimize loss and damage.”
“As the level of global warming continues to increase,” it said in a statement last week, “these extreme weather events and other climate impacts are becoming severe, and may be irreversible, threatening to further set back our growth as a nation.”
In Bohol, where many of the storm deaths were recorded, overturned vehicles were piled up on the side of the highway and in fields on Monday. Countless trees and debris littered the terrain. Many of the deaths had occurred in coastal areas inundated by storm surges or where people had been crushed by houses that crumbled in the wind. Everywhere, people could be seen scouring the ruins of homes to salvage what was left of their old lives.
On a highway leading to Ubay, near a bay in Bohol, survivors of the storm had scrawled, “Help us,” a desperate plea to passing helicopters and airplanes.
Officials warned that residents in remote areas were running out of food. Countries such as the United States, Canada, China and South Korea have pledged aid. A United Nations agency called for $107.2 million “to support the government in responding to the most urgent humanitarian needs for the next six months.”
Bohol’s governor, Arthur Yap, has sought donations to purchase food and other relief items. An early appeal brought in generators, but fuel is now a coveted commodity.
“Many bought generators, and that tripled the demand for gasoline,” Mr. Yap told reporters on Friday. “That’s the reason why we have long queues at the gasoline stations.”
Ananisa Guinanas, 27, went to get gasoline on Friday in Ubay with her 3-year-old daughter. Police officers were guarding the site.
“We have been lining up for the past seven hours,” she said. “I brought my daughter because I couldn’t leave her. Our house was destroyed. We desperately need gasoline for the motorcycle we would use to look for water.”
After the storm, the Loboc River turned brown from mud and debris.
Nilo Rivera, 34, said his and his mother-in-law’s houses were quickly swept away by the river’s rampaging waters once the storm hit.
“The water reached up to the second floor of our homes,” he said, pointing to a water line beside a structure left standing after the muddy water subsided.
They were now living in a makeshift tent.
Bohol is no stranger to calamities. A powerful quake destroyed one of its churches in October 2013 and severely damaged infrastructure. Casualties were low because the temblor had struck on a holiday.
A month later, Super Typhoon Haiyan, the most powerful storm to make landfall in the country’s recorded history, devastated huge swaths of the Philippines.
The toll: 6,500 dead or missing.
Frederic Soupart, the owner of the Fox and the Firefly resort in Bohol, says he believes that Rai was worse than Haiyan. Rai left destruction everywhere as it exited through the Palawan Islands, in the western Philippines. Parts of his resort were buried in waist-deep muck.
“I’ve never seen any flooding like this,” he said, estimating that damage from the storm would cost millions of Philippine pesos to repair. His resort is next to the Loboc River, and he and his staff had to shovel mud from the property.
“It doesn’t feel like Christmas,” Mr. Soupart said. “I was buying stuff at the hardware store, and the Christmas songs annoyed me.”
Cleanup operations have been slow, although the Philippine military had deployed engineering crews to help rebuild. Electricity and telecommunications had yet to be restored in Bohol and in many other areas.
In Siargao, a surfing destination on the northeastern tip of Mindanao Island, east of Bohol, no structure was left standing or spared damage.
The government evacuated dozens of foreign tourists and Filipinos on a military plane. But some chose to stay behind to help rebuild.
Vice President Leni Robredo, who was among the first national officials to reach devastated sites, said on Friday in a Christmas message, “Hope is found in togetherness.”
Many Filipinos sought comfort in the church. Priests appealed for calm as the national government scrambled to get aid to residents. Worshipers in Bohol used flashlights and candles to hold Mass at dawn.
Donn De Lima, 44, was among dozens from the Santo Niño Parish in Ubay who attended Mass on Christmas Eve. It was raining hard, and the roof of the church leaked.
“This Christmas is sad because my home was heavily damaged,” he said. After Mass, his family planned to share a simple meal under a rechargeable flashlight.
Others were not as lucky.
Alicia Nemenzo, 48, and her daughter Mavel Nemenzo, 21, spent Christmas Eve sheltering in a tiny roadside store after the storm wrecked their home. Their only source of light was a flickering candle.
“When it rains now, we get frightened,” she said. “I think we all were traumatized by this typhoon.”
Jason Gutierrez reported from Manila and Ezra Acayan from Bohol Province, the Philippines.
Philippines Typhoon Rai death toll reaches 375 as desperate survivors plead for supplies | Philippines
The death toll from the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year has surged to 375 , as desperate survivors pleaded for urgent supplies of drinking water and food.
The Philippine Red Cross reported “complete carnage” in coastal areas after Super Typhoon Rai left homes, hospitals and schools “ripped to shreds”.
The storm tore off roofs, uprooted trees, toppled concrete power poles, smashed wooden houses to pieces, wiped out crops and flooded villages – sparking comparisons to the damage caused by Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.
“Our situation is so desperate,” said Ferry Asuncion, a street vendor in the hard-hit seaside city of Surigao, which was devastated by the storm.
Residents urgently needed drinking water and food, he said.
At least 375 people were killed and 56 are missing in the latest disaster to hit the archipelago, with 500 more injured, the national police said.
More than 380,000 people fled their homes and beachfront resorts as Rai slammed into the country on Thursday.
One of the hardest-hit islands was Bohol – known for its beaches, “Chocolate Hills” and tiny tarsier primates – where at least 94 people have died, provincial Governor Arthur Yap said on Facebook.
Many wooden houses in Bohol’s coastal town of Ubay were flattened and small fishing boats destroyed on the island, where a state of calamity has been declared.
A senior official at the national disaster agency said he had not expected as many deaths.
“I was proven wrong as it appears now coming from the reports,” said Casiano Monilla, deputy administrator for operations.
Rai hit the Philippines late in the typhoon season: most cyclones develop between July and October.
Scientists have long warned that typhoons are becoming more powerful and strengthening more rapidly as the world becomes warmer because of human-driven climate change.
The Philippines, which is ranked among the most vulnerable nations to the impacts of climate change, is hit by an average of 20 storms every year, which typically wipe out harvests, homes and infrastructure in already impoverished areas.
In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan was the strongest storm ever to have made landfall, leaving over 7,300 people dead or missing. The death toll from Rai is not expected to get anywhere close to that number.
The Philippines has an established disaster management system that provides early warnings of approaching storms and moves vulnerable communities into evacuation centres.
But the storm has dealt a savage blow to the tourism sector, which was already struggling after Covid-19 restrictions decimated visitor numbers.
“SOS” has been painted on a road in the tourist town of General Luna on Siargao Island, where surfers and holidaymakers had flocked ahead of Christmas, as people struggled to find water and food.
“There’s no water any more, there’s a water shortage, on day one there was already looting in our neighbourhood,” Siargao resort owner Marja O’Donnell told CNN Philippines.
There has also been widespread destruction on Dinagat and Mindanao islands, which along with Siargao bore the brunt of the storm when it hit, packing wind speeds of 195 kilometres (120 miles) an hour.
Police reported 167 deaths in the Caraga region, which includes Dinagat, Siargao and the north-eastern part of Mindanao.
At least 14 people died on the Dinagat Islands, provincial information officer Jeffrey Crisostomo told broadcaster ABS-CBN, saying the area had been “levelled to the ground”.
With electricity knocked out in many areas, there was no signal or internet, hampering efforts to assess the storm’s damage.
Thousands of military, police, coast guard and fire personnel were deployed along with food, water and medical supplies, while heavy machinery – including backhoes and front-end loaders – were sent to clear roads.
President Rodrigo Duterte vowed to “look for another” two billion pesos ($40m) in aid, which would double his previous pledge.
But some expressed frustration at the government’s response.
“No one showed up, I don’t know where the politicians and (election) candidates are,” said a visibly angry Levi Lisondra, a resident in Surigao, on the northern tip of Mindanao.
“We paid big taxes when we were working and now they can’t help us.”