Residents of Legazpi city southeast of Manila flee the city ahead of the approaching Typhoon Rammasun on Tuesday (AFP Photo/Charism Sayat)
Thousands of people living in coastal areas, including survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban City, fled their homes as Typhoon Rammasun, known locally as Glenda, made landfall on Tuesday.
"This is already too much. Eight months after [Haiyan] and people are still living in tents," said Abe Fernandez, one of more than 2,000 people who were evacuated from a tent city on the outskirts of Tacloban to the city's Astrodome Center.
"I can still see myself swimming here and looking at the bodies of my dead friends. I’m still afraid," said Juliet Ann Collado, 16, who survived last November when a storm surge inundated the center, killing hundreds of people inside.
Typhoon Rammasun, which has maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour and gusts of up to about 100 mph, made landfall Tuesday evening in the eastern Philippines, and is expected to pass over the capital Manila and its more than 12 million inhabitants on Wednesday.
The weather bureau raised warning signals in areas directly in the path of the typhoon and warned residents, especially in low-lying and mountainous areas, against possible flashfloods and landslides.
Typhoon Rammasun is expected to hit fishing communities and bring heavy rain to Manila and nearby populated areas. Schools and government offices in some cities affected by the typhoon have closed since Tuesday.
"We're expecting heavy flooding, because with slight rain we are experiencing flooding already [in Manila]," said Gwendolyn Pang of the Red Cross.
In the Diocese of Catarman in Northern Samar province, Bishop Emmanuel Trance said the diocese's social action center already sent out warnings to the parishes to update them on the status of the storm.
The Diocese of Legazpi in Albay province already came out with an advisory for parishes to be ready to respond in case residents need to be evacuated.
"As Christians, we have two goals and that is to have zero casualty," said Fr Rex Paul Arjona, social action director of the Diocese of Legazpi.
"We also want to make our people feel, especially the poor, who will be affected by this weather, that there are people ready to assist them," the priest said.
In the Bicol region, some 60,000 families have already fled their homes as a precaution against the wrath of they typhoon.
Rafaelito Alejandro, director of the Office of Civil Defense in the region, said that residents had gone to evacuation centers since last Monday as local officials effected "pre-emptive evacuation" in risk-prone areas.
Pre-emptive evacuations were also effected in Catbalogan, Samar province.
Some 5,872 passengers were already stranded in ports in the Bicol, Southern Tagalog, and Eastern Visayas regions.
Typhoon Rammasun is the seventh tropical cyclone to hit the Philippines this year.
The central Philippines province of Leyte, which was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan last year with more than 7,000 people killed, has been placed under alert.
"We are already warning the public to be on alert for possible effects of the weather disturbance: landslides, flash floods, strong rains and winds," said Alexander Pama, head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.
Mina Marasigan, spokeswoman of the council, warned that the storm could become even more powerful as it nears land. She said there were concerns it might bring rainfall comparable to Typhoon Xangsane in 2006, which killed more than 200 people and displaced nearly two million due to heavy flooding.
The Philippines is hit by about 20 major storms a year, many of them deadly. Rammasun will be the first to make landfall since the rainy season began last month.
