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Thousands of Filipinos flee their homes as an approaching storm rapidly intensifies into a super typhoon.
Authorities in the Philippines have started evacuating people from coastal areas as a powerful typhoon barrels towards the heavily populated island of Luzon, where the capital Manila is located.
Typhoon Noru became a super typhoon “after a period of explosive intensification”, with sustained winds increasing to 185km/h (115 mph) on Sunday morning from 120km/h (74.5 mph) on Saturday evening, the disaster agency said in an advisory.
The storm, the strongest to hit the Philippines this year, is expected to continue strengthening as it makes landfall about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Manila in the afternoon or evening local time.
It could have wind speeds of up to 205 km/h (127 mph) when it makes landfall, the weather bureau said.
“We ask residents living in danger zones to adhere to calls for evacuation whenever necessary,” said Philippine National Police chief General Rodolfo Azurin.
The Philippines is regularly ravaged by storms, with scientists warning that they are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.
Weather forecaster Robb Gile told the AFP news agency that the rapid intensification of Noru as it neared land was “unprecedented”. The meteorology agency said its wind speed had increased by 90 kilometers per hour (56 miles per hour) in 24 hours.
“Typhoons are like engines – you need a fuel and an exhaust to function,” said Gile.
“In the case of [Noru]it has a good fuel because it has plenty of warm waters along its track and then there is a good exhaust in the upper level of the atmosphere – so it’s a good recipe for explosive intensification,” he said.
In Manila, emergency personnel braced for the possibility of strong winds and heavy rain battering the city of more than 13 million people.
Forced evacuations have started in some “high-risk” areas of the capital, officials said.
Thousands of people were also evacuated from mountainside villages prone to landslides and flash floods and in coastal communities that could be hit by tidal surges as high as three meters (about 10 feet) in Quezon province, including Polillo island and nearby Aurora province.
“The combined effects of storm surge and high waves breaking along the coast may cause life-threatening and damaging inundation or flooding,” the weather agency warned.
The Philippine Coast Guard said more than 1,200 passengers and 28 vessels were stranded in ports south of the capital.
Classes have been canceled and non-essential government services suspended for Monday.
The typhoon is predicted to barrel through Luzon Island overnight before starting to blow away into the South China Sea on Monday, forecasters said.
Noru comes nine months after another super typhoon devastated swathes of the country, killing more than 400 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.
The Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,600 islands, sees an average of 20 tropical storms a year.
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