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BREAKING NEWS: Philippines braces for Christmas storm
By JIM GOMEZ
Associated Press
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A powerful typhoon is on its way to slam into the eastern Philippines on Christmas Day as officials struggled to divert people’s attention from family celebrations and travel. A provincial governor offered roasted pigs to entice villagers to move to emergency shelters.
Typhoon Nock-Ten packed maximum sustained winds of 185 kilometers (114 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 255 kph (158 mph), and was expected to smash into the island province of Catanduanes Sunday night. It’s then forecast to blow westward across the southern portion of the main Luzon island and pass close to the capital, Manila, on Monday, before exiting into the South China Sea. Nock-Ten may weaken after landfall and hitting the Sierra Madre mountain range in southern Luzon.
Heavy rainfall, destructive winds and battering waves were threatening heavily populated rural and urban regions, where the Philippine weather agency raised typhoon warnings. Officials warned of storm surges in coastal villages, flash floods and landslides and asked villagers to evacuate to safer grounds.
But Christmas is the biggest holiday in the country, Asia’s bastion of Catholicism, giving officials a hard time getting people’s attention away from the holidays to heed the warnings. With many refusing to leave high-risk communities, some officials said they decided to carry out forced evacuations.
In the past 65 years, seven typhoons have struck the Philippines on Christmas Day, according to the government’s weather agency.
Gov. Miguel Villafuerte of Camarines Sur, which is on the typhoon’s forecast path, offered roast pigs, a popular Christmas delicacy locally called “lechon,” in evacuation centers to entice villagers to move to emergency shelters.
“I know it’s Christmas … but this is a legit typhoon,” Villafuerte tweeted on Christmas Eve. “Please evacuate, we’ll be having lechon at evacuation centers.”
Camarines Sur officials targeted about 50,000 families — some 250,000 people — for evacuation by Saturday night, but the number of those who responded was far below expectations.
In Catanduanes province, Vice Gov. Shirley Abundo said she has ordered a forced evacuation of villagers, saying some “are really hard-headed, they don’t want to leave their houses because it’s Christmas.”
“We need to do this by force, we need to evacuate them now,” she told ABS-CBN television.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development, which helps oversee government response during disasters, said only about 4,200 people were reported to have moved to six evacuation centers by Sunday morning in the Bicol region that includes Camarines Sur. She expects more people to heed evacuation orders as the weather begins to deteriorate.
“It’s difficult to force celebrations when our lives will be put at risk. Please prioritize safety and take heed of warnings by local government units,” welfare official Felino Castro told The Associated Press by telephone.
He said food, water and other emergency supplies had been pre-positioned in areas expected to be lashed by the typhoon. His department was to activate an emergency cluster composed of the military, police, coast guard and other agencies Sunday to oversee disaster-response plans.
About 20 typhoons and storms, mostly from the Pacific, lash the Philippine archipelago each year and provincial governments have long laid down a contingency system to launch war-like logistical preparations each time a major typhoon approaches.
But in an impoverished nation of more than 100 million people, where many live near the coast and on and around mountains and volcanoes, deadly natural catastrophes are a part of life in one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world.
In November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan struck the central Philippines with ferocious power, leaving more than 7,300 people dead and missing and displacing more than 5 million others after leveling entire villages despite days of dire warnings by government officials.
Residents flee as typhoon approaches
Manila, Philippines (CNN)Thousands of residents of low-lying areas of eastern provinces in the Philippines have been moved by authorities as Super typhoon Nock-ten nears the Southeast Asian country.
Officials say over 1,000 families have been evacuated from the eastern province of Camarines Sur, and the provinces of Catanduanes and Albay have been declared under a “state of imminent danger/disaster.”
The storm is growing stronger as it bears down on the Bicol region, tropical storm monitors report. The storm is expected to make landfall in the evening of Christmas Day in Catanduanes, an island province in the Bicol region.
The Joint Typhoon Warning Center reports that Nock-ten, locally known as Nina, currently has maximum sustained winds of 250 kph (155 mph) and gusts of up to 305 kph (190 mph).
The storm’s last recorded location was 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Catanduanes, and it is forecast to move west at 15 kph (9 mph).
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council reports 11,476 passengers, over 1,000 cargo ships and over a dozen other vessels were stranded in various ports in the region.
The Philippines’ tropical cyclone warning signal number 4 has been hoisted for Catanduanes and neighboring Camarines Sur. The warning signal, the second-highest level on the scale of alerts, indicates the storm could cause “heavy damage” to high-risk structures. Rice, corn and coconut plantations will likely suffer severe losses.
The Philippines Atmospheric, Geological and Astronomical Services Administration reports a possible storm surge of two to three meters in coastal areas.
Forecasters warned that the storm could bring lashing winds and dump heavy rain in several areas across of the country, including the capital, Manila.
There are fears that Nock-ten could potentially bring flooding to the capital, one of the most densely populated urban centers of the country, during the busy holiday weekend.
PAGASA reports that the typhoon will cause moderate to heavy rainfall in a 500-kilometer (311-mile) radius.
The typhoon warning center projects that the typhoon will gradually weaken “as the system begins to interact with land,” but warned it could still retain typhoon intensity.
The governor of the eastern seaboard province of Camarines Sur, Miguel Villafuerte, posted on Twitter that nearly 50,000 family evacuations had been scheduled by 7 p.m. Saturday local time (6 a.m. ET).
Camarines Sur is roughly 181 kilometers (112 miles ) away from the projected landfall location of the typhoon but also is a potential target.
As an added incentive to push people out of their homes and into shelters ahead of Christmas in this Catholic-majority country, Villafuerte has promised to provide the traditional dish of lechon (roasted pig) for his constituents if they proceed to evacuation centers, CNN affiliate ABS-CBN reported.
The Philippines has been battered by devastating typhoons in recent years, most notably Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 — considered to be among the strongest storms to make landfall. Haiyan killed more than 6,000 people and forced nearly 4 million people from their homes.
Typhoon Nock-ten is expected to approach with rain bands moving onshore, which could cause floods, landslides and storm surges. It is projected to pass through Southern Luzon and could go through Manila.
Meanwhile, authorities in the Philippines hoisted storm warnings over parts of the eastern Philippines, including Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, Catanduanes, Sorsogon, Masbate (including Ticao and Burias Islands), Northern Samar and Eastern Samar. (With CNN)
