The Philippines went on high alert yesterday as a super typhoon threatened to unleash more devastation for millions of people already struggling to recover from deadly floods that claimed 277 lives.
Typhoon Parma was gaining strength as it churned toward the nation and was expected to dump more heavy rain on areas still reeling from the weekend floods that forced nearly 700,000 people into evacuation camps.
“We are dealing with a very strong typhoon, so we should be at the highest level of preparedness,” weather bureau spokesman Nathaniel Santiago said, amid forecasts the typhoon would make landfall tomorrow. “There is a possibility that this will become a super typhoon.”
The government defines a super typhoon as one with winds reaching 175kph to 200kph with the potential to cause heavy damage.
While Parma is likely to bring less than half the rains of Saturday’s Tropical Storm Ketsana, it was expected to compound flooding in Metro Manila, parts of which remain submerged because of blocked drainage systems.
Ketsana dumped the heaviest rains in four decades on Metro Manila and in surrounding areas on Luzon island, triggering floods that swamped the national capital with up to 6m of water.
Ketsana has left 277 dead so far in the Philippines, government figures showed, and killed about 100 more after pounding Vietnam and Cambodia.
The number of people known to have been affected by Ketsana in the Philippines rose to 2.5 million yesterday, the government said in its latest update.
The number of flood survivors staying in gymnasiums, schools and other makeshift evacuation camps also continued to balloon, with about 687,000 people staying in them, the government said.
Those in the cramped, under-resourced evacuation centers were told to prepare for the new storm, with fresh rains certain to aggravate already squalid conditions.
As Typhoon Parma approached, worried Metro Manila residents, who had returned to their homes after the floodwaters receded and those whose houses were unaffected, were stocking up on food and emergency lights. Waitress Angel Francisco, 16, rushed back to check on her mother at their still-flooded home in Pasig City.
“There’s a new typhoon according to the news and I am worried for my mother,” she said, as she hitched a ride with a delivery truck to try and evacuate her mother.
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