Bangkok: A giant storm is grinding across the eastern Philippines, bringing mass downpours, terrifying winds and wreaking havoc across an area still trying to recover from a super typhoon 13 months ago.
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Typhoon Hagupit felled trees, ripped off roofs and brought down power lines when it slammed into Samar island with wind gusts of up to 210 kilometres per hour early on Sunday.
More than a million people fled to churches, schools and other makeshift shelters ahead of the most powerful storm to hit the Philippines this year.
Moving at only seven kilometres per hour, the storm crashed into remote fishing villages on Samar, raising fears of mass flooding and landslides.
The storm is expected to cut a three-day path across the island nation, affecting 33 million people.
Power has been cut across Samar and Leyte islands, which bore the brunt of Super Typhoon Haiyan on November 8 last year. That disaster killed 7300 people and displaced 4.1 million others.
Tacloban, the capital of Leyte, which was considered Haiyan's ground zero, is suffering another battering but has escaped the deadly storm surges that killed thousands last year.
"Tin roofs are flying off, trees are falling and there is some flooding," Stephany Uy-Tan, the mayor of Catbalogan, a city on Samar, told the AFP news agency after the storm made landfall.
Hagupit had weakened to a category 3 storm as it moved across the Pacific on Friday and early Saturday, well below "super typhoon" strength.
But experts warned the winds are still strong enough to destroy sturdy homes and buildings.
Hagupit – Filipino for "lash" – packed gusts of up to 240 kilometres per hour and a thunderstorm 15 kilometres tall sat at its centre as it tracked towards the Philippines.
The storm has a giant front of more than 600 kilometres.
Relief officials described efforts to keep people safe as one of the country's largest peacetime evacuations.
Learning the lessons of Haiyan, residents of towns in Hagupit's projected path boarded up homes, government buildings and shops and stacked sandbags.
"The people themselves are preparing and do not think twice about leaving their homes. They know what to do," said Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman.
Weather forecasters expect Hagupit – called Ruby locally – to move more than 800 kilometres north-west, through 47 of the country's 81 provinces.
The storm could reach as far as Manila, a city of more than 12 million people, many of whom live in low-lying areas vulnerable to severe flooding.
Airlines have cancelled almost 200 flights to central and southern Philippines as ports shut and sea travel was suspended.
Relief agencies said the extent of damage caused by Hagupit would not be known until it is safe for officials to leave shelters.
International and local aid agencies have mobilised teams and prepared relief supplies in affected areas.
Scientists say unusually strong storms to hit the Philippines in recent years are linked to climate change.
"To us in the Philippines, we are not any more debating on whether or not the impacts of climate change are here, we have experienced it," Voltaire Alferez of the Aksyon Klima Pilipinas NGO said on the sidelines of United Nations climate talks in Peru.
The country endures an average of 20 typhoons a year.
with AFP
