Typhoon Nalgae lashed the Philippines yesterday, killing at least one person and bringing fresh misery for more than 1 million people still trapped by floods from a storm earlier this week, officials said.
Nalgae made landfall on the main island of Luzon at 9am and was tearing southwest with sustained winds of 160kph and gusts of up to 195kph, the weather service said.
Philippine Science Undersecretary Graciano Yumul said the storm was tracking the same path as deadly Typhoon Nesat, which dumped the biggest single-day volume of rain on the area this year after hitting Luzon on Tuesday.
Photo: AFP
“At this point in time, all the flooded areas should be emptied of people. Local officials should implement forced evacuation,” he told a news conference.
One person was killed and another injured when a landslide buried a van on a mountain highway near the upland resort of Baguio, Alex Uy of the local civil defense office said.
“Baguio is being pummeled by strong rain and winds,” he said.
There have been no deaths in the city of 360,000, but the winds uprooted trees, he added.
Typhoon Nesat killed 50 people and left 31 missing, according to a government tally.
Officials say more than 3 million people are in Nalgae’s immediate path, but the typhoon’s 500km wide front means large parts of the island of 48 million people, including Manila, are also feeling its wrath.
While the typhoon is forecast to blow out at sea by 5pm, authorities are concerned about floods unleashed by Nesat which are expected to worsen with Nalgae’s passage.
Vast areas are already underwater in the heavily populated farming region of central Luzon, where rainwater from northern mountain ranges in Nalgae’s path flow across a 150km long floodplain before emptying into Manila Bay.
People along the huge Cagayan River basin that empties in the opposite direction to the northeast are also at risk, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said.
It said about 180,000 people were sheltering at state-run evacuation centers, mostly those displaced by Nesat.
Disaster council director Benito Ramos said thousands of rescue workers were deployed ahead of Nalgae’s landfall and the northeast coast was evacuated from Friday.
“We’re implementing persuasive evacuation operations,” said Ramos, a retired general. “If I have to handcuff people to remove them from their homes I could be charged with human rights violations.”
Ida de la Cruz, a 37-year-old farmer’s wife, sought refuge on her rooftop as floods engulfed her home and the rest of Pulilan, a town of 70,000 people an hour’s drive north of Manila.
“We can’t leave our 15 ducks as most of our income comes from the eggs that they lay,” she said while she washed clothes using the murky brown floodwaters that had swamped her farmhouse.
She said no help had arrived since the floods descended on Wednesday, when their three children were dispatched to her mother’s home.
She and her husband were down to 5kg of rice.
Nearby, dozens of families huddled in heavy rain under tarpaulin tents pitched on the side of the highway, the one part of Pulilan not engulfed by the sea of 3m deep waters.
Robert Pagdanganan, a former minister in the previous government, said the flooding that swept through four other nearby towns — including his house — was the worst he could remember.
“The problem is, there’s really nowhere to go,” he said.
“They [local officials] are trying their best, but even the evacuation centers are also flooded,” he added.
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