At least eight people died as a result of Typhoon Noru on Monday, including a squad of rescuers who were attempting to help villagers who were submerged in floods, according to authorities.
In San Miguel town, Bulacan province, five government rescuers perished when their boat capsized after it was struck by a crumbled wall, throwing them into raging floods, according to police and authorities.
Gov. Daniel Fernando of Bulacan said of them: “They were living heroes who were helping rescue the lives of our compatriots amid the tragedy.” The situation is quite sad.
On social media, authorities and neighborhood rescue organizations paid gratitude to the rescuers. The Bulacan police force said on Facebook, “They displayed courage and heroism in confronting danger despite the risks to their own lives to accomplish their responsibility of protecting other people.”
The strongest typhoon to strike the Philippines this year made landfall in eastern Quezon province on Sunday before weakening and moving into Vietnam early on Monday morning, according to forecasts.
Disaster response authorities said that about 80,000 people were relocated to emergency shelters throughout the main island of Luzon, some of them under duress.
Police also reported three further fatalities, including the drowning of a Bulacan peasant who defied instructions to abandon his home near an overflowing river. An elderly villager perished when his home was struck by a landslide, while a farmer who had gone missing was discovered dead in a plantation that had experienced a flash flood. A disaster response official informed a press conference that six fisherman were reported missing in the province of Camarines Norte.
A freshly constructed evacuation center housing more than 200 displaced families was pounded by the intense wind and rain in Aurora province’s hard-hit Dingalan town, where more than 6,000 dwellings were destroyed. However, no casualties were recorded, according to authorities.
In Manila’s metropolitan area, which was battered by intense wind and rain overnight, some 3,000 people were evacuated for safety. Although the morning sky were beautiful, Monday’s classes and government activities were canceled in the capital and the surrounding provinces out of caution.
Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla informed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in a televised meeting the president called to assess damage that the entire northern provinces of Aurora and Nueva Ecija, which were hit by the typhoon, were still without electricity on Monday. Repair teams were working to restore electricity.
However, he voiced alarm about how Noru and another storm that wreaked havoc on central and southern regions in December quickly escalated into super typhoons. Marcos Jr. applauded authorities for evacuating tens of thousands of people before the typhoon struck, averting further fatalities.
Is there a climatic change here? Inquired Marcos Jr., who entered office in June. “We’ve been monitoring these storms for a while, but things weren’t like bad previously. I’ve got to handle this, you know.”
Later, Marcos Jr. took part in an airborne survey of the rice-growing region’s typhoon-affected provinces, where several communities and portions of highways were still under water.
Prior to making landfall in the Philippines, Noru suffered a “explosive intensification,” according to Vicente Malano, director of the meteorological service in the Philippines.
In only 24 hours, Noru went from having steady winds of 85 kph (53 mph) on Saturday to a super typhoon with persistent winds of 195 kph (121 mph) and peak gusts of up to 240 kph (149 mph).
According to the meteorological service, Noru had sustained winds of 130 kph (81 mph) and gusts of 160 kph (99 mph) as of Monday midday and was heading northwest in the South China Sea toward Vietnam.
The Philippines is hit by 20 storms and typhoons on average every year. The Southeast Asian country is one of the most disaster-prone in the world since the archipelago is situated in the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” an area where many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions take place around much of the Pacific Ocean rim.