The strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year left at least six people dead, authorities said yesterday, after heavy rain and fierce winds battered the nation’s most populous island.
Typhoon Noru toppled trees, knocked out power and flooded low-lying communities as it swept across Luzon on Sunday and yesterday.
There have so far been no reports of widespread severe damage to buildings from the storm, which hit the nation as a super typhoon. Five people suffered minor injuries and several others are missing, disaster officials said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“I think that we may have gotten lucky at least this time, a little bit,” Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr told a briefing with disaster agencies.
Five rescuers were killed after they were sent to help flooded residents in San Miguel municipality in Bulacan province, near the capital, Manila.
Lieutenant-Colonel Romualdo Andres, chief of police in San Miguel, said the rescuers were wading through floodwaters when a wall collapsed, sending them into the fast current.
“Our house was swept away by the flood, it’s gone,” Willie Ortega, 59, said in San Miguel. “We weren’t able to save anything, even the rice to eat, none.”
An elderly man died after he was hit by a landslide in Burdeos municipality on the Polillo Islands, part of Quezon province, where the storm made landfall, Garner Jimenez of the local civil defense office said.
Noru smashed into the archipelago nation on Sunday after an unprecedented “explosive intensification” in wind speeds, the state weather forecaster said earlier.
It made landfall about 100km northeast of Manila, before weakening to a typhoon as it crossed a mountain range, coconut plantations and rice fields.
More than 74,000 people were evacuated from their homes before the storm hit, as the meteorology agency warned that heavy rain could cause “serious flooding” in vulnerable areas and trigger landslides.
However, yesterday there was no sign of the widespread devastation many had feared, as the storm moved over the South China Sea toward Vietnam.
State weather forecaster Ana Laurel said Noru brought less rain and moved faster compared with other destructive typhoons that have hit the Philippines.
“It all depends on the interplay of the weather systems. Each typhoon has its own characteristics,” Laurel said.
National Disaster Agency spokesperson Rafaelito Alejandro described the storm’s impact as “very minimal.”
Marcos said preparations for the storm helped.
“You might think that we overdid it. There is no such thing as overkill when it comes to disasters,” he said.
CHAOS: Iranians took to the streets playing celebratory music after reports of Khamenei’s death on Saturday, while mourners also gathered in Tehran yesterday Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a major attack on Iran launched by Israel and the US, throwing the future of the Islamic republic into doubt and raising the risk of regional instability. Iranian state television and the state-run IRNA news agency announced the 86-year-old’s death early yesterday. US President Donald Trump said it gave Iranians their “greatest chance” to “take back” their country. The announcements came after a joint US and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites. Trump said the “heavy and pinpoint bombing” would continue through the week or as long
TRUST: The KMT said it respected the US’ timing and considerations, and hoped it would continue to honor its commitments to helping Taiwan bolster its defenses and deterrence US President Donald Trump is delaying a multibillion-dollar arms sale to Taiwan to ensure his visit to Beijing is successful, a New York Times report said. The weapons sales package has stalled in the US Department of State, the report said, citing US officials it did not identify. The White House has told agencies not to push forward ahead of Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), it said. The two last month held a phone call to discuss trade and geopolitical flashpoints ahead of the summit. Xi raised the Taiwan issue and urged the US to handle arms sales to
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) yesterday said that it had confirmed on Saturday night with its liquefied natural gas (LNG) and crude oil suppliers that shipments are proceeding as scheduled and that domestic supplies remain unaffected. The CPC yesterday announced the gasoline and diesel prices will rise by NT$0.2 and NT$0.4 per liter, respectively, starting Monday, citing Middle East tensions and blizzards in the eastern United States. CPC also iterated it has been reducing the proportion of crude oil imports from the Middle East and diversifying its supply sources in the past few years in response to geopolitical risks, expanding
RSS