A second typhoon in a week is heading towards the Philippines, with residents in its path warned to flee from the oncoming destructive winds and life-threatening storm surge.
Hung Wong, known locally as U Wan, is following Typhoon Kalmegi, which killed around 200 people in the central archipelago nation and five people in Vietnam.
Forecasters are now warning that the storm could develop into a super typhoon before making landfall on the East Coast on Sunday.
Forecaster Benison Estarreja of the country’s meteorological agency PAGASA said Fongwon’s massive circulation, which stretches 1,500 kilometers (932 miles), was already bringing heavy rain and winds to parts of the region, Reuters reported.
“We can cover almost the entire country,” Estareja said.
On Saturday morning, Fanwong hurtled across the Philippine Sea with winds of 140 kilometers per hour (87 miles per hour) and gusts of up to 170 kilometers per hour (106 miles per hour).
PAGASA warned of strong winds and destructive storm surges in Luzon, the country’s most populous island and home to the capital Manila, as well as in the Visayas and Siargao, the country’s surfing capital, and called on residents in low-lying and coastal areas to seek shelter on higher ground and suspend all marine activities.
According to the Philippine Civil Aviation Authority, several airlines, including Philippine Airlines, canceled flights.
Just hours after Karmaegi’s downgrade, the Japan Meteorological Agency upgraded Heungwon to a typhoon on Friday evening.
The Philippines is no stranger to typhoons, and local officials say Fanwon is the 21st named storm to affect the country this year.
Its predecessor, Karmaegi, crisscrossed the central Philippines on Tuesday, leaving behind a trail of death and devastation, reducing entire districts to rubble and displacing tens of thousands of people. Local authorities said at least 188 people were killed, most of them in the tourist province of Cebu.
Although it wasn’t the strongest storm ever, it was slow-moving and dumped a lot of water into populated areas. Officials said most people drowned.
Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV, deputy director of the Philippine Civil Defense Agency, told local media that the impact was exacerbated by clogged waterways in an already flood-prone area and an apparent lack of understanding of early warnings.
The Philippines, one of Asia’s most flood-prone countries, has also been embroiled in a major corruption scandal involving flood control projects this year, with thousands of protesters taking to the streets.
Dozens of congressmen, senators and construction companies are accused of receiving kickbacks on funds intended for thousands of flood control projects.
Scientists have long warned that the human-induced climate crisis (for which developed countries have a greater historical responsibility) will only exacerbate the scale and intensity of regional storms that disproportionately affect populations in the Global South.
The Western Pacific Ocean is the most active tropical basin on Earth, but global ocean temperatures have been at record levels for each of the past eight years.
As the oceans heat up due to human-induced global warming, they provide enough energy to strengthen storms.
The climate crisis is accelerating rainfall events as the air warms, retaining more moisture, and squeezing it into towns, cities and communities, as is already happening this week in Southeast Asia.
