Two people have been killed in a powerful typhoon that grazed the Philippines’ northeastern tip, according to authorities who yesterday said that the evacuation of coastal villages and volcanic slopes averted a higher toll.
Many of the thousands who fled the storm’s path started to return home after Typhoon Noul — the fourth and strongest storm to hit the Philippines this year — whipped the coast with wind gusts of up to 220kph.
Eighteen months after Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated the central Philippines, churning up tsunami-like waves and leaving more than 7,350 people dead or missing, authorities credited the greater awareness with saving lives.
“People listened to our warnings. They’ve learned their lesson from past storms,” said Norma Talosig, civil defense director for the northeastern region.
The two confirmed deaths were a 70-year-old man and his 45-year-old son, who died after being electrocuted while fixing their house in Aparri town early on Sunday as Typhoon Noul started to bear down.
The evacuations began on Friday last week, with more than 3,000 people leaving coastal fishing communities in Isabela and Cagayan provinces, and hundreds more from villages near the slopes of Mount Bulusan in the central region.
Authorities had feared heavy rains could trigger volcanic mud flows after the volcano started belching ash earlier this month.
With civil defense authorities warning of dangerous storm surges of up to 2m, coastal residents were taken inland in buses, trucks and even ambulances.
Most of the evacuees started to return home on Sunday night, local authorities said.
In the coastal town of Santa Ana, strong winds broke power lines and peeled off palm-thatched roofs, but there were no casualties reported after residents fled exposed areas, including 700 holdouts who finally abandoned their seaside huts as winds began to blow violently on Sunday.
“We went around town telling people that it was best to evacuate ahead,” police officer Melvic de Castro said.
At least five towns in the area remain without power, the National Grid Corp said.
Typhoon Noul is now headed northeast towards Japan, and yesterday was skirting the east coast of Taiwan.
About 1,000 tourists were evacuated from Taiwan’s Green Island in the southeast in anticipation of the storm, and all flights and ferries were suspended to that island and nearby Orchid Island, another tourist hotspot.
Meanwhile, another storm is brewing in the Pacific Ocean that could threaten the Philippines early next week, state weather forecaster Aldczar Aurelio said.
The Philippines is battered by an average of 20 storms per year, many of them deadly.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing