Christmas Day :
InterAksyon.com, DARAGA, Albay, Philippines
Babies, toddlers and old people were loaded onto military trucks in pouring rain in the Philippines on Sunday as tens of thousands fled the path of a powerful typhoon barrelling towards the disaster-prone archipelago.
Officials warned of storm surges up to 2.5-meters (eight-feet) high, landslides and flash floods as Nock-Ten closed in on the Bicol peninsula and nearby islands. The typhoon threat, on one of the biggest holidays in the mainly Christian nation, triggered mass evacuations that officials said could eventually displace hundreds of thousands of people. One provincial governor offered roast pig at evacuation centres to entice people to forsake celebrations at home. “We went around with megaphones and gave instructions to our people to eat breakfast, pack and board the military trucks,” Alberto Lindo, an official of Alcala, a farming village of 3,300 people near the active Mayon volcano, told AFP. About 100 babies, toddlers, parents and elderly people were the first to be trucked off to a school some seven kilometres away as rain and strong winds shook trees at midday.
“There are large ash deposits on the slopes (of Mayon). Heavy rain can dislodge them and bury our homes in mud,” Lindo added. Philippine and international weather services said Nock-Ten, named after a bird found in Laos, was set to hit Bicol on the south of the main island of Luzon on Sunday evening. The US Joint Typhoon Warning Center has forecast sustained winds of 231 kilometres an hour and gusts of 278 km when Nock-Ten makes landfall at the now-isolated island province of Catanduanes, home to 250,000 people.
The government has forced more than
12,000 residents to move away from the Catanduanes coast after the state weather service warned the landfall could be as early as 6:00 pm, said provincial vice governor Shirley Abundo.
In Camarines Sur province near Catanduanes, governor Miguel Villafuerte said on his Facebook page that nearly 90,000 residents have been evacuated as part of his goal to achieve “zero casualty”. In another post on Twitter, the governor hinted at the difficulty of convincing people to recognise the approaching danger amid the revelry. “Please evacuate, we will offer roast pig at the evacuation centres,” he tweeted.
Weather forecasters said the typhoon would eventually affect an area of nearly 42 million people, including the capital Manila which was forecast to be hit on Monday. Civil defense officials in Bicol said earlier nearly half a million people in the region were in harm’s way and needed to be evacuated.
Evacuations were continuing on Christmas Day as the military and local governments sent trucks to clear people from coastal communities and other areas hit by landslides or flash floods in previous storms.
InterAksyon.com, DARAGA, Albay, Philippines
Babies, toddlers and old people were loaded onto military trucks in pouring rain in the Philippines on Sunday as tens of thousands fled the path of a powerful typhoon barrelling towards the disaster-prone archipelago.
Officials warned of storm surges up to 2.5-meters (eight-feet) high, landslides and flash floods as Nock-Ten closed in on the Bicol peninsula and nearby islands. The typhoon threat, on one of the biggest holidays in the mainly Christian nation, triggered mass evacuations that officials said could eventually displace hundreds of thousands of people. One provincial governor offered roast pig at evacuation centres to entice people to forsake celebrations at home. “We went around with megaphones and gave instructions to our people to eat breakfast, pack and board the military trucks,” Alberto Lindo, an official of Alcala, a farming village of 3,300 people near the active Mayon volcano, told AFP. About 100 babies, toddlers, parents and elderly people were the first to be trucked off to a school some seven kilometres away as rain and strong winds shook trees at midday.
“There are large ash deposits on the slopes (of Mayon). Heavy rain can dislodge them and bury our homes in mud,” Lindo added. Philippine and international weather services said Nock-Ten, named after a bird found in Laos, was set to hit Bicol on the south of the main island of Luzon on Sunday evening. The US Joint Typhoon Warning Center has forecast sustained winds of 231 kilometres an hour and gusts of 278 km when Nock-Ten makes landfall at the now-isolated island province of Catanduanes, home to 250,000 people.
The government has forced more than
12,000 residents to move away from the Catanduanes coast after the state weather service warned the landfall could be as early as 6:00 pm, said provincial vice governor Shirley Abundo.
In Camarines Sur province near Catanduanes, governor Miguel Villafuerte said on his Facebook page that nearly 90,000 residents have been evacuated as part of his goal to achieve “zero casualty”. In another post on Twitter, the governor hinted at the difficulty of convincing people to recognise the approaching danger amid the revelry. “Please evacuate, we will offer roast pig at the evacuation centres,” he tweeted.
Weather forecasters said the typhoon would eventually affect an area of nearly 42 million people, including the capital Manila which was forecast to be hit on Monday. Civil defense officials in Bicol said earlier nearly half a million people in the region were in harm’s way and needed to be evacuated.
Evacuations were continuing on Christmas Day as the military and local governments sent trucks to clear people from coastal communities and other areas hit by landslides or flash floods in previous storms.
