The powerful typhoon "Man-I" It destroyed houses, caused huge tidal waves and forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes and take shelter as it passed over the northern Philippines today, the Associated Press reported.
This is the sixth tropical cyclone to hit the East Asian island nation in the past month.
Typhoon "Man-I" hit the eastern island province of Catanduanes last night with sustained winds of up to 195 km/h and gusts of up to 240 km/h. The country's meteorological agency warned of a "potentially catastrophic and life-threatening situation" in the provinces in the path of the typhoon.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the typhoon, which was forecast to move northwest across northern Luzon today, the archipelago's most populous region. The capital, Manila, is likely to be spared a direct hit, but along with outlying areas, a severe weather alert has been issued and warnings of dangerous coastal storms are in place.
"The rain was minimal, but the wind was very strong and howling terribly,'' Roberto Monterola, a disaster relief official in Catanduanes, told the AP by phone. "On the main boulevard here, near the waterfront houses, tidal waves reached more than 7 meters. It looked really scary," he added.
All of Catanduanes province is without power after the typhoon toppled trees and power poles, and disaster response teams are checking how many more houses were damaged in addition to those affected by previous storms, Monterola said.
Provincial authorities were so alarmed by the approach of the typhoon that they threatened vulnerable villagers with arrest if they did not comply with orders to evacuate to safer places. More than 750,000 people have taken refuge in shelters, including churches and a shopping mall, because of the "Man-I" and two previous storms mostly in the northern Philippines, a representative of the Civil Defense Service said.
Each year, the Philippines is hit by an average of about 20 tropical storms, which are accompanied by torrential rains and gale-force winds and cause dangerous landslides. Last month, floods and landslides caused by tropical storm "Trami" and Typhoon Kun Ray killed 162 people and left 22 missing, according to authorities, Reuters noted.
Earlier this month, for the first time since statistics began to be kept in 1951, there was a case where the Western Pacific Ocean region was hit by four different storms at the same time, the Japan Meteorological Agency noted.