By Martin Abbugao (AFP)
MANILA — Typhoon Parma pummeled the northern Philippines on Saturday, toppling trees and cutting off power and telephone lines, as its rains threatened to bring more misery to millions of flood survivors in Manila.
Residents said extremely strong winds and rains began lashing the northern province of Cagayan after midday (0400 GMT), hours before the typhoon was expected to make landfall there in the evening.
“The wind is very, very angry,” Cagayan region police chief Director Roberto Damian said in a radio interview from his headquarters, about 400 kilometres (250 miles) from the Philippine capital.
“I can see trees are being toppled inside our camp… One sturdy Narra tree was uprooted and smashed a car and a house. We cannot go out,” he said in a radio interview before his line went dead.
There were reports that power and telephone lines were being cut off because of the storm, said Lieutenant Colonel Ernesto Torres, spokesman of the National Disaster Coordinating Council.
Cagayan is a mainly rural area with coastal towns and a population of just over one million people.
DZBB radio said heavy rains also pelted two towns in Zambales province north of Manila, and cars had to turn their headlights on because of poor visibility.
Its correspondent reported seeing flooding and some residents who happened to be on the streets holding on to trees so they would not be blown away.
Weather officials said Parma, packing winds of 175 kilometres per hour (109 mph) and gusts of up to 210 kph, had veered away from Manila and nearby areas still reeling from the massive floods brought by storm Ketsana last weekend.
But while the capital was expected to be spared from Parma’s powerful winds, it could still experience heavy rains that could worsen the squalid conditions in crowded evacuation camps and hamper relief efforts.
“While the storm has changed course, it does not mean there will be no (more) rains… We’re not yet sure if it will not rain and if it will not flood again,” Defence Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said in a radio interview.
Heavy rain showers had already fallen across Manila on Friday night and Saturday morning, adding to the burden of the sprawling city of 12 million people that was awash with flooding six-metres (20-feet) high last Saturday.
Ketsana’s floods, the worst in 40 years, left 293 people dead and, of the more than three million people affected, about 400,000 remain in poorly supplied evacuation centres in Manila and nearby areas.
Florante Cruz, 40, a tricycle driver, said he was relieved that the storm has spared Manila from its strong winds but was still wary of the rains.
“I heard it has changed course but we cannot be so sure yet,” he told AFP as he went back to his partially submerged house in the capital to retrieve some materials for his family who had fled to an evacuation centre.
“If it came here my house would have been blown away,” he said of his shanty in the middle of a rice field turned into a lake in Taguig town.
After being accused of not preparing the nation properly for Ketsana, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Friday placed the Philippines under a “state of calamity” to expedite relief efforts and get ready for Parma.
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