Powerful typhoon batters Philippines
Print Edition
A powerful typhoon slammed into the eastern Philippines on Christmas Day, spoiling the biggest holiday in Asia’s largest Catholic nation, where a governor offered roast pig to entice villagers to abandon family celebrations for emergency shelters.
Typhoon Nock-Ten was packing maximum sustained winds of 185 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 255 kph when it made landfall last night in Catanduanes province, where fierce winds and rain knocked out the island’s power and communications, officials said.
There were no immediate reports of injuries.
After Catanduanes, the typhoon, which had a 500km rain band, was expected to barge westward across the mountainous southern plank of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon and blow close to the capital, Manila, today, before starting to exit toward the South China Sea. Nock-Ten may weaken after hitting the Sierra Madre mountain range.
Heavy rainfall, destructive winds and battering waves were threatening heavily populated rural and urban regions, where the Philippine weather agency raised typhoon warnings, stranding thousands of people in ports as airlines canceled flights and ferries were prevented from sailing.
Christmas is the biggest holiday in the Philippines making it difficult for officials to get people’s attention to heed the warnings. With many refusing to leave high-risk communities, officials said they decided to carry out forced evacuations.
Governor Miguel Villafuerte of Camarines Sur province, which is in the typhoon’s expected path, offered roast pig, a popular Christmas delicacy called “lechon,” in evacuation centers to entice villagers to move to emergency shelters.
“I know it’s Christmas but this is a legit typhoon,” he tweeted on Christmas Eve. “Please evacuate, we’ll be having lechon at evacuation centers.”
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