TRANSCRIPT
An evacuation warning, urging villagers in the eastern Philippines to seek higher ground as a powerful new typhoon touches down.
Super Typhoon Fung-Wong made landfall yesterday with two fatalities initially reported and around one million people evacuated ahead of one of the most powerful storms of the year.
The Philippines is still recovering from Typhoon Kalmaegi, which struck the country just a week ago, leaving at least 224 Filipinos dead and widespread destruction in its wake.
For many, these storm evacuations have become a regular occurrence, with some choosing to flee early in case of a repeat of Kalmaegi.
"They said this typhoon is big and strong, so we wanted to prepare. Of course, we are scared, and if the typhoon strikes us at night then we'd need to scramble. I have some small grandchildren with me, so we decided to just evacuate early."
Weather bureau PAGASA says the storm crossed over the north of the archipelago's most populous island Luzon, with torrential rain and winds reaching up to 230 kilometres per hour.
26-year-old evacuee Kricia Simon from Luzon is camping with her children on an indoor basketball court in Isabela province.
“I’m anxious and scared because we don’t know how strong the typhoon will impact us, so we’re scared. I have my kids with me, and my husband is still out making a living, so we decided to just stay here and evacuate.”
Luzon and another island Eastern Visayas bore the brunt of the storm's early onslaught, with one person drowning and another trapped under debris.
Several airports, including Sangley near the capital Manila and Bicol to the south, have closed.
Liz Ritchie, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Monash University.
She says the two typhoons occurring in such rapid succession leaves Filipinos particularly vulnerable.
"One of the really terrible things about this is that when you have two very, very strong events so close together, there's been no time for recovery, for trying to build the infrastructure back up again and so this is where you know we can see some really devastating effects from a second system that comes through so very quickly. So even if even if Fung-wong wasn't as intense and big as it was that would still have been quite a bad event for the Philippines."
It's the 21st storm this year to hit the Philippines, coming quite late in the year.
Weather bureau PAGASA says the peak of the typhoon season in the Philippines is typically July through October, when nearly 70 per cent of all typhoons develop.
Professor Ritchie says the Philippines is often the worst-hit country in its region due to geographical reasons.
"The Philippines tend to see a lot of tropical cyclones. They're not always typhoon or super typhoon strength when they see them but they will usually see a lot of them coming over the Philippines during the season. And it's when you think about it it's kind of because this sort of a gateway to Southeast Asia so anything that develops out in the main Pacific Ocean more often the knot will travel in a Westerly direct Westwood direction toward and often over the Philippines before they then go on an impact near South China or Vietnam."
She says this leaves the Philippines on the frontline of new kinds of extreme storms affected by climate change and global warming.
"They're tending to bring more rain with them. As the atmosphere and the ocean warms, the atmosphere can actually just hold more moisture that can be converted into rain. Without anything else changing sea level rise makes these systems more impactful because it drives more storms further in land just because the sea heights are higher. These systems are likely to slow down and become more rainy and all of these factors are really important and that really just points us to thinking that we've gotta think ahead and we've gotta be really thinking about the infrastructure that we need to have in place to try and mitigate these problems."
Super Typhoon Fung-wong has now passed over the Philippines islands and is expected to weaken before curving around and reaching northern Taiwan.
Recovery efforts are now underway and the full impact of this latest destruction is soon to be understood.
Pope Leo says his thoughts and prayers are with the mostly Catholic population.
"Dear brothers and sisters, I am close to the people of the Philippines affected by a violent typhoon. I pray for the deceased and their families, for the injured and the displaced."
