Super Typhoon Koppu slammed the Philippines with heavy rains and gales, toppling trees and power lines and threatening northern provinces and the capital with flooding and mudslides.
Koppu packed maximum winds of 241 kilometers per hour, making it the equivalent of a Category 4 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, according to the 5 a.m. bulletin of the U.S. Navy and Air Force’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The storm made landfall in Casiguran town of Aurora province Sunday morning and was lingering in the area, the local weather bureau said. Aurora remains under Signal No. 4, the second- highest on the Philippine weather agency’s five-step warning.
Trees were uprooted, blocking some roads in Isabela and Aurora, Alexander Pama, executive director of the Philippines’ National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, said in a briefing Sunday. About 5,300 passengers were stranded at seaports with 28 domestic and two international flights canceled. At least two cities and 22 municipalities in Luzon have lost power, he said.
Thousands of residents were evacuated in the provinces of Isabela, Quirino, Cagayan and Aurora, Pama said. While there has been no official report of deaths yet, local radio said at least one person died after a boat capsized in Surigao in southern Philippines. The roof of the General Hospital in Baler, a surfing town in Aurora, was ripped off, ABS-CBN reported.
Five Days
The storm, called Lando in the Philippines, has dumped about 20 inches of rain in the past day and has the potential to bring 2 feet to 4 feet more as it moves across Luzon, Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground in Ann Arbor, Michigan said on the website.
One computer model suggests the storm could linger over the Philippines for five days, which would make flooding worse, Masters said. Densely populated Manila, home to 12 million people, should be at the edge of where Koppu could drop about 12 inches of rain, Masters said.
Humanitarian Imapct
The Philippines is battered annually by an average of 20 cyclones that form over the Pacific Ocean, and is the second- most at-risk nation globally from storms, after Japan, according to Maplecroft, a U.K.-based researcher. Typhoon Haiyan, a Category 5 storm, killed more than 6,000 people in November 2013 and caused economic damage estimated at more than $13 billion. It had maximum winds surpassing 300 kilometers per hour.
About 4.5 million people may be affected may be affected by Koppu, according to the UN Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System. Thirty-five thousand people may be affected by storm surges, it said.
Tsunami-like water surges may be as high as 13 feet in Aurora and nearby areas, the local weather bureau said.
Koppu’s movement is restricted by Typhoon Champi behind it and other high-pressure areas that are slowing its movement. As a result, it could dump heavy rains for 6 to 12 hours, President Benigno Aquino said on Friday, citing the weather bureau in Manila. The government is aiming for “zero casualties,” Aquino said.
Heavy to intense rain will fall within the 600-kilometer coverage of Koppu, according to the bureau. Aquino said rainy weather will probably persist through the coming week.
One silver lining from the storm may be relief from dryness associated with the El Nino weather pattern.