MANILA, Philippines (Washington Insider Magazine)– Six people were killed as Typhoon Noru left the northern Philippines on Monday. It also caused power outages in 2 entire provinces, trapping communities in floods, and necessitated the suspension of government activities in and around the capital.
The most potent typhoon to strike the nation this year made landfall in Burdeos town in Quezon province around dusk on Sunday. It then weakened as it swept across the main Luzon area overnight, forcing over 52,000 people to seek refuge in emergency shelters, reported ABC NEWS.
North of Manila, in the province of Bulacan, Governor Daniel Fernando said that 5 rescuers who were operating a boat to assist those stranded in floodwaters were struck by a crumbled wall and then ostensibly perished in the raging waves.
Police said that a villager from Bulacan perished after disobeying requests to evacuate his riverbank home. Authorities were simultaneously searching for a missing farmer in a waterlogged village in western Zambales province and the second fatality in Burdeos town.
A freshly constructed evacuation center housing more than 200 displaced families was pounded by the intense rain and wind in Aurora province’s hard-hit Dingalan town, where more than 6,000 dwellings were damaged. However, no casualties were recorded, according to officials.
In Manila’s metropolitan area, which was battered by intense rain and wind overnight, some 3,000 individuals were evacuated for safety. Although the morning sky was beautiful, Monday’s classes and government activities were canceled in the capital and the surrounding provinces out of caution.
Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla informed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in a televised session the president called to analyze the damage and coordinate disaster response that the entire northern provinces of Nueva Ecija and Aurora, which were struck by the typhoon, were still without electricity on Monday. Repair crews were working to restore electricity.
While Noru and another storm that wreaked havoc on the southern and central provinces in December were lauded by Marcos Jr. for saving lives by evacuating tens of thousands of people ahead of the typhoon, he voiced concern about how quickly they turned into super typhoons.
Later, Marcos Jr. took part in an airborne survey of the rice-growing region’s typhoon-affected provinces, where several communities and portions of highways were still under water.
Before hitting the Philippines, Noru suffered an “explosive intensification,” according to Vicente Malano, director of the weather service in the Philippines.
In just 24 hours, Noru went from having steady winds of 85 kph (53 mph) on Saturday to a super storm with persistent winds of 195 kph (121 mph) and peak gusts of up to 240 kph (149 mph).
According to the weather service, Noru had sustained gusts of 130 kph (81 mph) and winds of 160 kph (99 mph) as of Monday midday and was heading northwest in the South China Sea toward Vietnam.
The Philippines is hit by 20 typhoons and storms on average every year. The Southeast Asian country is among the most disaster-prone in the world since the archipelago is situated in the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” an area where many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions take place around much of the Pacific Ocean rim.
In the central Philippines in 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the worst tropical storms ever recorded, destroyed entire communities, washed ships ashore and forced more than 5 million people from their homes. This was much to the south of Noru’s course.
