Aerial view of flooding caused by Super Typhoon Noru on September 26, 2022 at San Miguel, Bulacan province, Philippines. STAFF / REUTERS
At least eight people were killed by Typhoon Noru in northern Philippine regions on Monday, including a squad of rescuers attempting to save residents stranded in floodwaters, according to officials.
Five government rescuers perished in San Miguel town, Bulacan province, after their boat capsized after colliding with a crumbled wall, hurling them into raging floodwaters, according to police and officials.
The governor of Bulacan, Daniel Fernando, told the DZMM radio network, “They were living heroes who helped rescue the lives of our compatriots during the disaster.” “This is truly tragic.”
Officials and local rescue organizations paid social media gratitude to the rescuers. On Facebook, the Bulacan police force stated, “They displayed courage and heroism in the face of danger, despite the risk to their own lives, in order to carry out their job of saving others.”
Forecasters say the strongest typhoon to strike the Philippines this year made landfall in the eastern province of Quezon on Sunday before weakening as it blew out into the South China Sea and headed toward Vietnam on Monday morning.
Nearly 80,000 people were relocated, some forcibly, to emergency shelters across the main island of Luzon, according to disaster-response officials.
Police confirmed three further fatalities, including a Bulacan peasant who drowned after refusing to leave his home near an overflowing river. A missing farmer was discovered dead in a plantation struck by a flash flood, and an elderly villager perished when his home was destroyed by a landslide. The province of Camarines Norte is missing six fisherman, a disaster response official told a news briefing.
IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE FOR OBANDOEOS Daniel R. Fernando, governor of Bulacan, directs the distribution of relief supplies and essentials…
The Provincial Government of Bulacan published the notice on Monday, September 26, 2022.
More than 6,000 dwellings were damaged in the hard-hit town of Dingalan, Aurora province, and a newly constructed evacuation center housing more than 200 displaced families was pounded by the wind and rain, but no injuries were reported, according to officials.
Overnight, over 3,000 individuals were evacuated to safety in metropolitan Manila, which was pummeled by strong winds and rain. Monday classes and government activity were halted in the capital and surrounding provinces as a precaution, despite the fact that the morning sky was clear.
The whole typhoon-ravaged northern provinces of Aurora and Nueva Ecija remained without electricity on Monday, and crews were working to restore power, Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla told President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in a televised meeting convened to review damage.
Marcos Jr. thanked officials for evacuating tens of thousands of people prior to the typhoon, thereby averting additional deaths, but expressed alarm over the quick intensification of super typhoons Noru and another storm that destroyed central and southern regions in December.
“Is this global warming?” Marcos Jr., who became president in June, inquired. “We have observed these storms for a long time, but they have never been like this… This is something I must address.”
Later, Marcos Jr. participated in an aerial survey of typhoon-devastated provinces in the rice-growing region, where numerous villages and stretches of roads remained inundated.
Before hitting the Philippines, Noru suffered a “explosive strengthening” over the open Pacific Ocean, the chief of the Philippines’ weather bureau told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Noru grew from steady winds of 85 kilometers per hour (53 mph) on Saturday to persistent winds of 195 kilometers (121 miles per hour) and gusts of up to 240 kilometers per hour (149 mph) at its peak late Sunday.
At midday on Monday, Noru had sustained winds of 130 kilometers per hour (81 miles per hour) with gusts of 160 kilometers per hour (99 miles per hour) and was moving northwest in the South China Sea toward Vietnam, according to the weather agency.
Each year, approximately twenty storms and typhoons strike the Philippines. The island is also situated in the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” a region encompassing the majority of the Pacific Ocean’s rim where numerous volcano eruptions and earthquakes occur, making the Southeast Asian country one of the most disaster-prone in the world.