Philippines urges evacuations ahead of Christmas Day typhoon
MANILA, Dec. 24 : (AFP) - Philippine authorities urged hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes on Saturday as a strong typhoon threatened to wallop the country's east coast on Christmas Day.
Nock-Ten is expected to be packing winds of 222 kilometres per
hour (138 miles per hour) when it makes landfall on Catanduanes, a remote
island of 250,000 people, on Sunday, the US Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.
It is then expected to hit the country's main island of Luzon,
including the capital Manila, on Monday."We issued an advisory to local
government units this morning to conduct preemptive evacuations," Rachel
Miranda, spokeswoman for the civil defence office in the Bicol region that
includes Catanduanes, told AFP.
Bicol, an agricultural region of 5.5 million people, is often
the first area to be hit by the 20 or so storms and typhoons that pound the
archipelago each year.
The most powerful and deadliest was Haiyan, which left 7,350
people dead or missing and destroyed entire towns in heavily populated areas of
the central Philippines in November 2013.
The Philippine weather service warned of potentially deadly
two-metre (six-and-a-half-foot) waves along the east coast, as well as
landslides and flash floods from heavy rains.
Local broadcaster ABS-CBN showed footage Saturday of long lines
of trucks, cars and vehicles stranded at Bicol ports after the coastguard shut
down ferry crossings to nearby islands as a precaution.The action prevented
thousands of people from returning to their hometowns for the Christmas
weekend, it said.
Cedric Daep, civil defence chief for the Bicol province of
Albay, told AFP at least 400,000 people in that region alone needed to be
evacuated.
"Our evacuation centres will not be able to accommodate all
of them," he said. Others were being asked to stay with relatives or
friends."We are requesting vehicle support" from other government
agencies to move people to safety, Daep added.
