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 Typhoon Hagupit had weakened slightly as it churned slowly across
the Pacific and was no longer a category 5 "super typhoon", the
Philippine weather bureau PAGASA said, but was likely to remain
destructive when it makes landfall on Saturday.
Ports were shut across the archipelago, leaving more than 2,000
travelers stranded in the capital Manila, the central Bicol region
and Mindanao island in the south, after the coastguard suspended sea
travel ahead of the typhoon.
Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific canceled some of their flights
to central and southern Philippines.
The eastern islands of Samur and Leyte, which are still recovering
from last year's super typhoon Haiyan, could be in the firing line
again.
"I am afraid and scared," said Teresita Aban, a 58-year-old
housewife from Sta. Rita, in Samar province, wiping away tears and
trembling as she spoke. "We're prepared but still fearful, we
haven't finished repairing our house, it still has tarpaulin patches
and here comes another storm."
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Management in Geneva
said 200,000 people had been evacuated in the central island
province of Cebu.
"Typhoon Hagupit is triggering one of the largest evacuations we
have ever seen in peacetime," said spokesman Dennis McLean.
The eye of the storm was around 380 km (235 miles) east of Borongan,
in Eastern Samar, PAGASA said on Friday afternoon. Cold, dry
Siberian winds blowing from the north had sapped some of its
strength, but it was still packing winds of up to 195 kph near the
center with gusts of up to 215 kph.
"Although we said it has weakened, 195 kph is still very strong...We
should not be complacent," said Landrico Dalida, Jr. acting deputy
administrator for operations at PAGASA.
The agency added that the radius of the storm had narrowed slightly
to 600 km from 700 km, but said it would still bring torrential rain
and 3- to 4-metre storm surges when it slams into Eastern or
Northern Samar provinces on Saturday afternoon.
"It won't be a super typhoon anymore," said Mario Montejo, the
Philippines' Science and Technology Secretary. "Its weakening is
gradual but continuous."
The weather bureau also said the typhoon had veered slightly north
and was approaching eastern coasts at around 10 kph.
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EARLY EVACUATION
Haiyan, one of the strongest typhoons ever to make landfall and
known locally as Yolanda, left more than 7,000 dead or missing and
more than 4 million homeless or with damaged houses when it tore
through the central Philippines in November 2013.
"It's better to evacuate early...We don't want to experience what we
went through during Yolanda," said Gigi Calne, a housewife seeking
shelter with about 3,000 others at a school in Basey, in Samar
province, in central Philippines.
"It was difficult to save our family and ourselves because we moved
too late."
About 10 million residents of the Bicol and Eastern Visayas regions
of the central Philippines are at risk of flooding, storm surges and
strong winds as Hagupit hits land. AccuWeather Global Weather Center
said more than 30 million people would feel the impact of the
typhoon across the Philippines.
The weather bureau said 47 provinces in the central Philippines were
at risk of strong wind and rains, including Eastern Samar and Leyte,
worst-hit by 250 kph winds and storm surges brought by Haiyan. About
25,000 people still live in tents, shelters and bunkhouses more than
a year later.
In Tacloban City, Leyte, which accounted for about half of the death
toll from Haiyan, about 19,000 people from coastal villages thronged
into 26 evacuation centers, said Ildebrando Bernadas of the city's
disaster office.
"We are expecting to double that once we implement forced
evacuations," Bernadas said, adding about 95 percent of residents
from coastal areas have been evacuated.
(Additional reporting by Jazmin Bonifacio in Samar, Erik dela Cruz
and Neil Jerome Morales in Manila and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva;
Editing by Alex Richardson)
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