A second typhoon in a week is heading towards the Philippines, with tens of thousands of residents warned to evacuate from oncoming destructive winds and life-threatening storm surge.
Hung Wong, known locally as U Wan, is following Typhoon Kalmegi, which killed around 200 people in the central archipelago nation and five people in Vietnam.
More than 100,000 residents were evacuated across the eastern and northern regions on Sunday, according to Reuters, and Hung Wong is expected to make landfall starting Sunday night local time.
The country’s meteorological agency PAGASA upgraded the storm to a super typhoon on its intensity scale, recording maximum wind speeds of 185 kph (115 mph) and gusts of 230 kph (143 mph). However, it still falls below the super typhoon standard at more widely used scales, such as those used by the U.S. military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center, which requires wind speeds in excess of 240 km/h (150 mph).
According to Reuters, PAGASA forecaster Benison Estarreja said the 1,500-kilometre (932-mile) Fanwon’s massive circulation had already battered parts of the region with heavy rain and winds on Saturday.
“We can cover almost the entire country,” Estareja said.
PAGASA had previously warned of strong winds and devastating storm surges in Luzon, the country’s most populous island, home to the capital Manila, the Visayas, and Siargao, the country’s surfing capital, and urged residents of low-lying and coastal areas to evacuate to higher ground and cancel all marine activities.
According to the Philippine Civil Aviation Authority, more than 300 domestic and international flights were canceled.
The Philippines is no stranger to typhoons, and local officials say Fanwon is the 21st named storm to affect the country this year.
Its predecessor, Karmaegi, crisscrossed the central Philippines on Tuesday, leaving behind a trail of death and devastation, reducing entire districts to rubble and displacing tens of thousands of people. Local authorities said at least 188 people were killed, most of them in the tourist province of Cebu.
Although it wasn’t the strongest storm ever, it was slow-moving and dumped a lot of water into populated areas. Officials said most people drowned.
Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV, deputy director of the Philippine Civil Defense Agency, told local media that the impact was exacerbated by clogged waterways in an already flood-prone area and an apparent lack of understanding of early warnings.
The Philippines, one of Asia’s most flood-prone countries, has also been embroiled in a major corruption scandal involving flood control projects this year, with thousands of protesters taking to the streets.
Dozens of congressmen, senators and construction companies are accused of receiving kickbacks on funds intended for thousands of flood control projects.
Scientists have long warned that the human-induced climate crisis (for which developed countries have a greater historical responsibility) will only exacerbate the scale and intensity of regional storms that disproportionately affect populations in the Global South.
The Western Pacific Ocean is the most active tropical basin on Earth, but global ocean temperatures have been at record levels for each of the past eight years.
As the oceans heat up due to human-induced global warming, they provide enough energy to strengthen storms.
The climate crisis is accelerating rainfall events as the air warms, retaining more moisture, and squeezing it into towns, cities and communities, as is already happening this week in Southeast Asia.
