Typhoon Koppu batters northern Philippines

Rising number of deaths, over 100,000 families affected

Typhoon Koppu is sweeping slowly across the northern part of the Philippines, destroying provinces and forcing thousands to flee from their homes. At least 100,000 families have been affected.

The tropical cyclone, known as typhoon Lando in the Philippines, is over 500-kilometers in diameter. As of Wednesday evening, Oct. 21, it was crawling northeast towards the Calayan and Babuyan islands, Taiwan and lower Japan.

The state weather bureau PAGASA issued an advisory at 11pm, saying that the storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 65 kilometers per hour (kph) and heavy gusts of up to 80 kph, according to ABS-CBN News.

A severe weather bulletin (No. 23) issued by the Philippine National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) on Tuesday, Oct. 20 reported that Koppu has only “weakened slightly.” On Wednesday, the NDRRMC reported the storm has weakened into a “Low Pressure Area” (LPA).

The storm’s center point is about 90 kilometers, West of Calayan, Cagayan (north of mainland Luzon), with maximum sustained winds of 75 kph near the center and gusts up to 90 kph. It has been labeled from a category 5 to category 1 storm, reports said.

The NDRRMC placed Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, Apayao, Abra, Batanes, and Northern Cagayan (including Calayan and the Babuyan islands) under public storm signal number 2 (winds of 61-120 kph). La Union, Pangasinan, Benguet, Nueva Vizcaya, Ifugao, Mt. Province, Isabela, Kalinga, and the rest of Cagayan regions were placed under public storm signal 1 (winds of 30-60 kph).

The estimated rainfall amount ranges from “moderate to heavy, to at times intense” within the diameter of the storm. “Moderate to strong winds” blowing from north to southwest will prevail over Luzon, with “moderate to rough” coastal waters,” the NDRRMC said in its situational report Wednesday.

Baguio City reported 1,059 millimeters rainfall earlier this week, according to the UK Met Office. NASA’s Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) analysis data showed that most of the island of Luzon was covered by very heavy rainfall from Koppu. The analysis indicates that most of the island of Luzon received over 300 mm (11.8 inches), and some areas near the cyclone’s path were shown to be saturated with over 760 mm (about 30 inches) of rainfall.

Several towns in Aurora province have been cut off from civilization due to major floods and landslides. The entire town of San Antonio in central Luzon has been “engulfed by flood waters,” town Mayor Antonio Lustre told ABS-CBN on Monday. Flooding incidents were also reported in Pangasinan, Isabela, Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, Pampanga, Zambales, Cagayan, and Benguet.

“There’s no other weather features to move it along so it’s just kind of drifting about,” Weather Channel meteorologist Kevin Roth told NBC News. “The storm will have been producing rain in some areas for five-and-a-half days before it moves on–that’s a long time to build up a large rainfall total.”

As of press time, the number of deaths has risen to 35 on Wednesday, according to the NDRRMC in Quezon City. 24 have been injured during the onslaught of the typhoon, and NDRRMC spokesperson Romina Marasigan confirmed 194,387 families (907,267 persons) that have been affected, evacuated, or displaced from their homes.

The Weather Channel reported a number of deaths from drowning, damages, and landslides in provinces like Palayan and Tinoc.

“There were people who got trapped by the flood on their roofs, some were rescued already,” said Vice Mayor Henry Velarde of Jaen, a farming town in badly-hit Nueva Ecija, where about 80 percent of the villages were flooded, according to the Associated Press.

While landslides and river floods swamped and inundated towns and provinces, residents have scrambled to safety, tragically losing their homes, animals, and farmlands in the process. “Our rice farms looked like it was [run] over by a giant flat iron. All the rice stalks were flattened in one direction,” Velarde said.

The cost of damage to agriculture is estimated at 6.3 billion pesos, while city infrastructure damages are estimated to be 520,000 pesos, and is still expected to rise.

“Out of the 272,006 hectares planted to rice, 269,694 have a chance of recovery,” said Philippine Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala.

Due to the flooding and landslides, 128 road sections were left impassable, while 24 bridges were closed, reported Philippine Star.Typhoon Lando’s aftermath also included 6,947 damaged houses, 540 of which are totally damaged and 6,407 are partially damaged in Regions 1, 2, 3 and Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR).

Hundreds of volunteers, both civilians and police officials, have converged on affected areas–such as in landlocked Nueva Ecija–to help stranded farmers and villagers.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III flew to Nueva Ecija to check the flooding situation and distribute food and care packages in an emergency shelter. Aquino said that Koppu’s unusually slow speed allowed it to batter the north for about three days, instead of just a few hours.

He also urged villagers not to return to their homes. “They think it is safe already to go back to their communities, but we are preventing them right now,” Aquino told reporters.

The Philippine government, which is conducting an aerial survey and a comprehensive report on the cyclone’s total damage, promised to provide about 6.1 billion pesos to restore any destroyed agriculture in farming regions, and almost 5.5 million pesos to provide infrastructure.

As of press time, more than 65,000 villagers in the northern region have been displaced, over 20,000 across mainland Luzon, and around 5,426 families (23,993 persons) pre-emptively evacuated from Regions I, II, III, IV-A, and CAR.

With the heavy rains and slow speeds, Typhoon Koppu is expected to hit the northern Philippines for several more days before continuing towards Taiwan and the southernmost islands of Japan.

“Koppu has moved into an area of increasing vertical wind shear [through Luzon Strait] which is expected to dissipate the storm by October 22,” reported NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Though causing widespread damage, the rainfall has also provided needed water to several dams that have suffered from the effects of another Pacific tropical storm, El Niño, according to a situation report from the United Nations. The Angat Dam, which supplies a majority of Metro Manila’s water needs, saw an increase of 7.2 meters in its water level, said The Weather Channel.

PAGASA weather forecaster Aldczar Aurelio urged the public and those living in affected villages and provinces to remain calm, evacuate the region, and not be complacent in times of typhoons. He also warned against possible landslides and flash-floods in low, mountainous provinces under the public storm signal.

Richard J. Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross, told NBC News that water was rising steadily in Pangasinan province, pushed by heavy rains and dam water being released. Several low-lying towns in the region were asked to evacuate, warning possible floods from Agno River.

“We are sending rescue teams there now. We will be busy rescuing people from the tops of roofs–they have no place to go,” Gordon said. “A lot of people can drown or be displaced from their homes. This is a developing tragedy.”

Koppu, which is Japanese for “cup,” is the 12th storm this year to hit the Philippines. The country averages 20 storms and typhoons each year. In November 2013, over 7,300 people were left dead and thousands missing after Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), one of the most powerful storms on record, battered the central Philippines.

“[In the Western Pacific,] they’re located in the belt basically between the equator and the subtropics,” Bob Henson, from Weather Underground forecast services, told CNN. “It’s considered to be the most vulnerable large nation on earth for tropical cyclones.”