Typhoon Hagupit: 500,000 people flee to safety in eastern Philippines | World news | The GuardianTyphoon Hagupit: 500,000 people flee to safety in eastern Philippines | World news | The Guardian










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Typhoon Hagupit



Typhoon Hagupit: 500,000 people flee to safety in eastern Philippines









Locals praying typhoon Hagupit doesn’t reach levels of last year’s devastating typhoon Haiyan which claimed 7,350 lives
























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Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing areas where typhoon Hagupit is due to land.



Chris Johnston and agencies


Saturday 6 December 2014 11.38 EST







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A powerful typhoon struck the eastern Philippines on Saturday, bringing intense rain and threatening further destruction of areas still bearing the scars of a super typhoon little more than a year ago.
More than half a million people fled to shelters ahead of typhoon Hagupit making landfall. As the storm arrived, power supplies were cut across most of the central Philippine island of Samar and nearby Leyte province, including Tacloban City. It was considered ground zero of the devastating super typhoon Haiyan last year that killed 7,350 people and was the world’s deadliest natural disaster in 2013.
Jojo Moro, a 42-year-old businessman who lost his wife, daughter and mother in Tacloban last year, said: “I’m scared. I’m praying to God not to let another disaster strike us again. We haven’t recovered from the first.”
“The wind is blowing so strongly, it’s like it is whirling,” Mabel Evardone, an official of the coastal town of Sulat in eastern Samar, said on local radio. “The waters have risen now.”
Although Hagupit had weakened to a category 3 storm, two notches below “super typhoon”, it could still result in significant damage, with torrential rain and potentially disastrous storm surges of up to 4.5m (15 ft), authorities said.
The eye of the typhoon was 55km (35 miles) from the town of Dolores, eastern Samar, at midday UK time.
With winds of up to 175kph (110 mph) near the centre and gusts of up to 210kph (130 mph), the storm picked up speed as it moved northwest.
Flights and ferry services in the central and southern Philippines were cancelled as more than 600,000 residents of low-lying villages fled to schools, town halls and churches, the national disaster agency said. At least 50 municipalities were at risk of storm surges.
Relief agency Refugees International said it was deeply concerned that evacuation centres may not be safe.
More than 30m people were expected to feel its impact across the Philippines, but the storm was not expected to hit Manila, home to about 12m people.
The islands of Samar and Leyte were worst-hit by 155mph winds and storm surges brought by Typhoon Haiyan in November.
About 4m people were left homeless or with damaged houses and some 25,000 in eastern Samar and Leyte still live in tents or shelters.



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