Typhoon Hagupit

Typhoon 'Ruby' may affect 19 

million people

ABS,

6 December 2014

MANILA - Typhoon Ruby (international name Hagupit) may affect up to 19 million people in the Philippines, the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) warned Friday.

In addition, up to 1.9 million people living in coastal areas may also be affected by storm surges that the typhoon may create, GDACS dded.

GDACS is a joint project of the United Nations and the European Commission on dissemination of disaster-related information.

It said Ruby's Category 1 wind speeds (120 kilometers per hour or higher) may have an impact on the following heavily populated areas:

Bicol - 3.9 million people
Central Luzon - 6.1 million people
National Capital Region - 7.9 million people
Southern Tagalog - 8.2 million people
Eastern Visayas - 3 million people

GDACS also listed vital infrastructure in the country such as airports, ports, and power plants that could be at risk.

It has also raised an orange alert for storm surge impact in the country because of the typhoon.

MILLIONS EVACUATE

Millions of people in the have county are already seeking shelter in churches, schools and other makeshift evacuation centers ahead of the typhoon's expected landfall Saturday.

Ruby, which would be the strongest to hit the Southeast Asian archipelago this year, is expected to impact more than half the nation including communities devastated by Super Typhoon Yolanda last year.

Authorities said more than 500,000 families, or about 2.5 million people, in the eastern Philippines would be evacuated ahead of Hagupit's expected landfall on Saturday night or Sunday.

"Everyone here is gripped with fear," Rita Villadolid, 39, told AFP as she sat with her family and hundreds of other people inside a sports stadium in Tacloban, one of the cities still yet to recover from Haiyan.

Elsewhere in Tacloban, a coastal city of 220,000 people on the eastern island of Leyte, people began flooding into churches and schools with little more than bags of clothes.

Yolanda, the strongest storm ever recorded on land with winds of 315 kilometers (195 miles) an hour, killed or left missing more than 7,350 people as it tore across the central Philippines last year.

Ruby was generating winds of 195 kilometers an hour on Friday as it tracked towards the Philippines from the Pacific Ocean, according to state weather bureau PAGASA.

But this would still make Ruby the strongest storm to hit the Philippines this year, and it would also bring storm surges more than one storey high to many coastal areas, PAGASA warned.

Ruby's weather band was 700 kilometers wide and would affect 55 of the nation's 85 provinces, including Leyte, according to Pagasa.

Metro Manila, the nation's capital with a population of more than 12 million people, could also suffer a direct hit, according to the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

PAGASA, which had a slightly different forecast for Ruby, said the capital would not be directly in the storm's path.

The Philippines is often the first major landmass hit by typhoons and major tropical storms that are created in the Pacific Ocean. It endures about 20 major storms a year, many of them deadly.

The Philippines, a developing nation of 100 million people, has in recent years faced unusually strong storms that scientists have warned are linked to climate change.

More than 1,900 people were left dead or missing in December 2012 after Typhoon Pablo hit Mindanao, an area that does not normally experience major storms.

In December 2011, 1,268 people were killed when Tropical Storm Sendong caused massive flooding in another part of Mindanao.

Yolanda, Pablo, and Sendong were the world's deadliest storms of the past three years. - with a report from Agence France-Presse