Typhoon Hagupit ripped through the Philippines on Sunday, downing trees and knocking out power to a region still struggling to bounce back from a deadly storm last year that killed thousands. The storm weakened slightly on Sunday — with sustained of 87 miles per hour and gusts of up to 105 mph —according to the weather bureau, PAGASA.
More than 1 million people had fled to shelters by the time Hagupit made landfall Saturday night, according to Reuters. The eye of Hagupit hit the town of Dolores in Eastern Samar around 9:15 p.m. local time (8:15 a.m. ET) on Saturday. After Hagupit — Filipino for "smash" or "lash" — hammered Eastern Samar, part of a region that was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan's which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing— it moved across the island before making a second landfall on the island of Masbate.
The vast and fickle storm system is expected to hover over the island nation for the next few days. PAGASA said Hagupit is expected to make a third landfall on Sibuyan Island on Sunday night, bringing strong winds and storm surge. The full extent of the damage was not clear early Sunday, but trees were down and power was out to large swathes of land. Disaster relief group Feed the Children said it was expecting as many as 30,000 people would need assistance in the immediate aftermath of the storm, and expected Leyte and Samar to be among the hardest-hit areas.
"This is the same location where families were displaced last year" after Haiyan, the organization's Philippines director, Esperanza Abellana, told NBC News. "It could be worse than that, but we'll need about 24 hours before we can make a complete assessment. The power is down, the internet is not very good." Power was cut across most of the eastern island of Samar and nearby Leyte province, including Tacloban City, considered ground zero of Haiyan last year."I can't penetrate the areas, I can't go north or south because of fallen trees and power lines. Many areas are flooded," Ben Evardone, congressman for Eastern Samar, told Reuters from his base in the provincial capital Borongan. Army troops were deployed to supermarkets and major roads in provinces in the typhoon's path to prevent looting and chaos and clear debris, all of which slowed the government's response last year, said Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang, head of the Philippines' 120,000-strong military."We're on red alert, so the entire armed forces is being mobilized for this typhoon," Catapang said at a news conference.
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— Cassandra Vinograd
Reuters contributed to this report.
First published December 7 2014, 12:24 AM
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/15WKAUB
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