Typhoon Mirinae, the fourth cyclone to wallop the Philippines in a month, was barreling towards the capital of Manila, where some districts are still submerged by recent massive flooding, forecasters said on Friday.
Authorities closed schools, grounded ferries and army troops mobilized a battalion with rubber boats ready for rescue operations in the capital and more than 25 other provinces. Trucks with food and other relief goods were dispatched to northern provinces in the typhoon’s path.
Mirinae - Korean for the Milky Way - is forecast to make a landfall on Friday evening in the eastern province of Quezon, sparing the country’s rice bowl in the heart of the main Luzon Island before passing south of Manila.
“If the centre does not pass directly over Manila, we will still surely feel it,” said chief government forecaster Nathaniel Cruz.
The typhoon, packing winds of 93 miles (150 kilometers) per hour and gusts of up to 115 mph (185 kph), is expected to exit Luzon into the South China Sea later on Saturday.
The government’s disaster agency told people to prepare 72-hour survival kits, including food items like rice plus a radio set, flashlights and batteries, clothing and first aid.
With the weather still clear on Friday, millions of Filipinos boarded buses heading to their home provinces for this weekend’s All Saints’ Day, when people visit cemeteries paying respects to dead relatives.
Defence Secretary Gilbert Teodoro expressed the fear that floods and traffic congestion may trap visitors at graveyards, where people traditionally spend a day or even a night, but few heeded his call to scrap their commemoration of the Roman Catholic holiday.
Northern Philippines is still struggling to recover from back-to-back storms that killed 929 in floods and landslides. Tropical Storm Ketsana on Sept. 26 caused the worst flooding in 40 years in and around Manila, followed by Typhoon Parma that unleashed mudslides in the northern mountains Oct. 3.
Typhoon Lupit last week skirted the northeast and veered towards Japan.
In some provinces, floodwaters raged through cemeteries, breaking up tombs and sweeping away caskets and bodies.
About 122,000 people remain in government-run evacuation centres, and many communities in Manila suburbs are still under water, with residents moving on makeshift rafts and foot bridges.
In Arenda village, where knee-deep waters still lingered along the shore of Laguna Lake, southeast of Manila, Hilaria Abiam was getting ready to leave her house at a moment’s notice.
“If the floodwater threatens to rise again then I will surely evacuate because I am really frightened,” she said.
