A powerful typhoon with gusts of up to 235kph hit the Philippines late yesterday, disrupting Christmas celebrations for tens of thousands who fled its approach, officials said.
Typhoon Nock-Ten made landfall in the eastern island province of Catanduanes at 6:30pm, the state weather service said.
There were no immediate official reports of damage or casualties from the storm, one of the strongest this year to hit the disaster-prone archipelago on the Pacific Rim.
Photo: EPA
The military and local governments earlier moved at least 102,000 people from the coasts and other hazardous areas of Catanduanes and the nearby Bicol Peninsula, provincial officials said, after experts warned of possible huge waves, floods and landslides.
The typhoon was forecast to sweep west and threaten the country’s most densely populated areas, including the capital, Manila, this morning.
“It would pass over land overnight and we hope that would dissipate the typhoon’s strength somewhat,” state weather forecaster Lorie de la Cruz said.
She said maximum sustained winds were 185kph at 5pm, but the agency did not have the figure during landfall itself.
In the Bicol region in the south of the main island of Luzon, babies, toddlers and older people were loaded onto military trucks in pouring rain earlier yesterday, as the weather service warned of possible storm surges up to 2.5m high, landslides and flash floods.
Nock-Ten, named after a bird found in Laos, struck on one of the biggest holidays in the mainly Christian nation and one provincial governor offered roast pig at evacuation centers to entice people to abandon celebrations at home.
In the village of Alcala on the slopes of the active Mayon Volcano, about 100 babies, toddlers, parents and older people were the first to be trucked off to another school as rain and strong winds shook trees.
“There are large ash deposits on the slopes [of Mayon]. Heavy rain can dislodge them and bury our homes in mud,” said Alberto Lindo, an official in the farming village of 3,300 people.
The government forced more than 12,000 residents to move away from the Catanduanes coast, Catanduanes Vice Governor Shirley Abundo said on ABS-CBN TV.
In Camarines Sur province near Catanduanes, Governor Miguel Villafuerte said on Facebook that about 90,000 residents were moved out of their homes as part of his “zero casualty” goal.
“Please evacuate, we will offer roast pig at the evacuation centers,” he said on Twitter.
Civil defense officials in Bicol earlier said about half a million people in the region were in harm’s way and needed to be moved out.
The military and local governments sent trucks on Christmas Day to clear people from coastal communities and other areas hit by landslides or flash floods in previous storms.
About 20 typhoons or lesser storms strike the Philippines each year, routinely killing hundreds of people, and Bicol is often the first region to be hit.
It prides itself on having sharpened its disaster response to minimize casualties, and all ferry services and commercial flights in Bicol were suspended.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)
EYE ON STRAIT: The US spending bill ‘doubles security cooperation funding for Taiwan,’ while also seeking to counter the influence of China US President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a US$1.2 trillion spending package that includes US$300 million in foreign military financing to Taiwan, as well as funding for Taipei-Washington cooperative projects. The US Congress early on Saturday overwhelmingly passed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024 to avoid a partial shutdown and fund the government through September for a fiscal year that began six months ago. Under the package, the Defense Appropriations Act would provide a US$27 billion increase from the previous fiscal year to fund “critical national defense efforts, including countering the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” according to a summary