New | Philippines evacuates 24,000 people amid threat of Typhoon Maysak
Around 24,000 people from the Philippines are being evacuated today with Typhoon Maysak just a day away from potentially striking the country’s northeast coast, officials said.
Around 24,000 people from the Philippines are being evacuated today with Typhoon Maysak just a day away from potentially striking the country’s northeast coast, officials said.
Storm surges, flash floods and landslides remained potential threats even though Maysak, once a super typhoon, has now weakened with maximum sustained winds of 160 kilometres per hour, they said.
“We plan to move people out of coastal villages,” Nigel Lontoc, a senior civil defence official for the region, said.
In all, some 24,000 people from the coastal province of Aurora, where the typhoon is projected to make landfall early tomorrow, would be evacuated, Lontoc added.
Having started out in the Pacific Ocean, Maysak is expected to weaken further as it crosses the main Philippine island of Luzon tomorrow, according to state weather forecaster Alczar Aurelio.
Aurelio said large waves of up to two metres are expected to hit the area.
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About 20 typhoons and storms hit the Philippines each year, many of them deadly, but such weather disturbances are rare in April, the height of the tropical Asian nation’s dry season.
Maysak is forecast to strike at the tail-end of a long Easter holiday that saw millions of Filipinos flock to the beaches to escape the heat.
Retired army general Jovie Narcise, who is visiting the Aurora town of Dingalan, said the skies there were clear but that there were big waves crashing along the shore.
Small outrigger fishing boats had been pulled up and stored about 30 metres away from the water to keep them from being swept out to sea, he said.
“There are lots of tourists arriving in the area but they are going to resorts situated on higher ground,” Narcise said.
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Social Welfare undersecretary Vilma Cabrera told a news conference in Manila that about 10,000 tourists were warned yesterday to stay away from the Aurora beaches.
“We have asked the tourists [in Aurora] to stay in their hotels and avoid the water,” said Lontoc, the regional disaster official.
Maysak was tracked about 450 kilometres southeast of Aurora’s coast at 10am and was moving northwest at 22 kilometres an hour.
Maysak last week ravaged the Federated States of Micronesia, leaving at least five dead, thousands homeless and crops destroyed.
