Typhoon Hagupit is gathering strength in the western Pacific and could bring damaging winds and flooding to the Philippines over the weekend.
People in the Philippines are braced for the arrival of Typhoon Hagupit, expected to hit land on Saturday.
Hagupit, which is building strength over the Pacific, is slowly bearing down on the region devastated by Typhoon Haiyan a year ago.
Hagupit has gusts of up to 170km/h (105mph) and is expected to be a category 4 storm by Saturday.
Thousands of people, many still living in temporary shelters, have been told to go to evacuation centres.
Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Yolanda, was the most powerful typhoon ever recorded over land.
It tore though the central Philippines in November 2013, leaving more than 7,000 dead or missing.
Local people have been stocking up on supplies ahead of the storm's arrival
Hagupit is not expected to be a powerful as Haiyan, but could bring storm surges up to one storey high.
The vice-mayor of Tacloban, the city which was worst hit by Haiyan, said the authorities were enforcing evacuation orders.
"We have no more excuse, we have gone through Yolanda, and to lose that many lives, it's beyond our conscience already," Jerry Yaokasin told reporters on Wednesday.
But he told AFP news agency: "Our problem is, we don't have enough evacuation centres."
Meteorologists say there is a chance Hagupit could veer north towards Japan and miss the Philippines altogether, but officials said they were preparing for a worst case scenario.
Helen Buena, an employee at a supermarket in Tacloban, told AFP people were stocking up on supplies.
"It's not raining yet but people are panic buying after hearing about the typhoon warnings on television and radio," she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment