After 10 dead in Philippines, storm heads to China

[October 19, 2010]  CAUAYAN, Philippines (AP) -- A super typhoon that killed 10 people and flattened forests in the northern Philippines dumped heavy rains on the capital Tuesday as it headed across the sea to menace its next likely targets in southern China.

Typhoon Megi struck the Philippines on Monday with ferocious winds of 140 miles (225 kilometers) per hour, but initial assessments showed relatively light damage and casualties, partly because the storm struck sparsely populated areas. Philippine officials also cited their massive emergency preparations days ahead of the storm.

Food vendor Nesie Callaotit, her husband and two children were hurriedly packing clothes to flee to safety when the wind yanked off half of their tin roof, exposing their house in northeastern Isabela province to pounding rain and the horrifying wind.

They held on to a wooden post for three hours, weeping and praying together, until the chaos eased.

"All of us were in tears," the 40-year-old Callaotit said. "We thought it was our last day together."

After it exited into the South China Sea on Tuesday, Megi was almost stationary packing winds of 108 mph (175 kph) but was forecast to regain strength before its expected landfall in southern China on Thursday. Chinese authorities evacuated 140,000 people from a coastal province.

The storm could also eventually hit Vietnam, which already was suffering from unrelated flooding that has killed 41 people. On Monday, surging currents on Vietnam's flooded main highway swept away a bus and 19 of its passengers, including a boy pulled from his mother's grasp.

Isabela province in the northeast Philippines, Megi's entry point, bore the brunt of the Typhoon Megi's destruction while more than 8,000 people rode out the typhoon in sturdy school buildings, town halls, churches and relatives' homes.

Roads in and out of the coastal province were deserted and blocked by collapsed trees, power lines and debris.

Iron-sheet roofs on many of the houses were blown away. In Tamauini town, Ariel Marzan said he escaped just minutes before his house tumbled amid winds so strong his roof was swept into a nearby rice field 30 yards (meters) away.

"I didn't expect it to be so strong," he said as he surveyed the damage and picked up the strewn pieces of his household.

Nearby coconut and banana groves were flattened.

At least 10 deaths were blamed on the typhoon, including three men who drowned in a fish pond where the typhoon made landfall, and a man who had just rescued his water buffalo then slipped and fell into a river in Cagayan province, near Isabela.

In Pangasinan province, a mother and her 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son who were pinned to death when a tree collapsed on their house, disaster official Eugene Cabrera said. Another man was killed by lightning in the same province.

At least nine were injured in the region by falling trees, collapsed roof and shattered glass, officials said.

Even as the typhoon moved away, its massive outer bands still stretched over much of western Luzon and drenched the capital, Manila, and surrounding areas, snarling traffic and sending about 1,000 people out of their homes into temporary shelters.

President Benigno Aquino III said Tuesday that although the typhoon caused significant damage, the loss of life was minimal and "could have been much greater had we not prepared for the storm."

"The work of bringing life back to normal in the soonest possible time is already under way," he said.

Assistant Agriculture Secretary Salvador Salacup said an initial estimate of $36 million losses to rice and corn crops showed the damage was minimal. Cagayan Valley and Ilocos regions lost around 12 percent of their rice production for the season. Cagayan Valley alone accounts for 30 percent of the national rice output.

In Vietnam, officials say up to 31.5 inches (800 millimeters) of rain have pounded areas in just a few days, forcing 126,000 people to flee their homes. Earlier flooding this month left more than 80 people dead or missing.

The Hong Kong Observatory said Megi was expected to hit land Thursday. An official from the press office of the China Meteorological Administration said the typhoon could hit the coastlines of Guangdong and Hainan provinces on Thursday or Friday.

The meteorologists issued a second-highest alert for potential wild winds and huge waves. Nearly 140,000 people fled homes in the southern island province of Hainan, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday.

The death toll from flooding in Thailand rose to five on Tuesday. Downpours that started over the weekend have affected nearly 55,000 people in 17 central and northeastern provinces, according to the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department.

Education Minister Chinnaworn Boonyakiat said 167 schools in seven provinces were flooded, but damage was limited since school was not currently in session.

In hardest-hit Nakhon Ratchasima province in the northeast, the water levels forced one hospital to evacuate 1,300 patients to other hospitals in nearby provinces. In one district, three 6.6-foot (2-meter) alligators escaped from a farm located near a river that burst its banks. Two of them were subsequently captured.

[Associated Press; By BULLIT MARQUEZ]

Associated Press writers Jim Gomez, Teresa Cerojano and Hrvoje Hranjski in Manila; Margie Mason and Tran Van Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam; Scott McDonald in Beijing; and Jocelyn Gecker in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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