A giant storm swept out of the Philippines yesterday after killing at least 27 people and devastating remote coastal communities, but there was relief that it spared the capital and other areas from disaster.
Typhoon Hagupit struck the far eastern island of Samar on Saturday with winds of 210kph, making it the most powerful storm to hit the Philippines this year and threatening widespread destruction.
However, the typhoon steadily weakened as it traveled west across the central Philippines, passing close to the capital, Manila, on Monday night with only a fraction of the forecast torrential rain.
Photo: EPA
After a series of catastrophic storms in recent years killed thousands, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III spearheaded what the UN said was one of the biggest peacetime evacuation efforts ever.
Aquino issued nationwide orders to ensure there was no repeat of Typhoon Haiyan, which claimed more than 7,350 lives as it devastated entire communities in November last year. Nearly 1.7 million people sheltered in evacuation centers as Hagupit passed their areas, according to government figures, and authorities hailed the strategy as a template for coping with future disasters.
“One of the lessons [from Haiyan] was to evacuate before the storm hits,” Philippine Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon told reporters.
“Evacuate if you live near the sea, evacuate if you live near trees whose branches might fall on you,” Gordon said. “That lesson was learnt.”
Gordon said another crucial factor was that Hagupit did not generate storm surges, compared with Haiyan when walls of seawater more than two stories high laid waste to hundreds of thousands of coastal homes.
In Manila, tens of thousands of people, mostly the city’s poorest residents living in shanty homes along the coast and riverbanks, spent Monday night in evacuation centers to wait out the storm.
They returned to their homes yesterday in drizzly weather after only moderate rain and no major flooding throughout the night.
“I’m relieved and thankful that I still have my house, but I pity those who have lost their homes in the Visayas,” 63-year-old Corazon Macario said as she prepared to leave a Manila evacuation center and head back to the riverside shanty she shares with her husband and seven relatives.
Macario was referring to the central islands of the Southeast Asian archipelago that felt the full force of Hagupit and Haiyan.
They include Samar, one of the nation’s poorest islands — about 600km southeast of Manila — which has long suffered because it is regularly the first to be hit by storms that sweep in from the Pacific Ocean.
Most of the 27 people reported to have been killed were in Samar, according to the Red Cross.
The military flew emergency flights with food, water and other essentials from Cebu to the worst-affected areas on Samar yesterday.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of