Strong typhoon blows closer to northern PHL, forcing evacuations, sea travel halt

A POWERFUL typhoon blew closer to the northern Philippines on Tuesday, forcing thousands to evacuate and halting sea travel amid warnings of torrential rains and tidal surges up to 3 meters, or nearly 10 feet.

The strongest winds at the storm’s center are expected to remain offshore as typhoon Egay (international code name: Doksuri) barrels northwest off Cagayan and Batanes provinces, but they may slam into or pass close to Cagayan’s outlying Babuyan Islands in the Luzon Strait, which has been placed under the highest of a fivestep cyclonic wind warning system, forecasters said.

Under Alert Level 5, “the situation is potentially very destructive to the community,” the weather bureau said, and warned the ferocious winds pose “extreme threat to life and property.”

The typhoon’s 680-kilometer, or (420-mile) wide rain band could cause flash floods and set off landslides in mountainous northern provinces, the weather bureau said.

D oksuri was last tracked 190 kilometers east of Aparri town in Cagayan province with sustained winds of 185 kilometers per hour

(kph) and gusts of up to 230 kph, government forecasters said.

The typhoon would also enhance seasonal monsoon rains in central and northern provinces. It was forecast to continue moving northwest on a track south of Taiwan that would make landfall in China later this week.

C agayan Gov. Manuel Mamba said he suspended work in his province to allow people to prepare for the onslaught and ordered the evacuation of thousands of people in 11 coastal towns as a precaution.

“ This is a supertyphoon and we’re carrying out preemptive evacuations in all coastal villages because we’re afraid of storm surges,” Mamba told The Associated Press by telephone, adding weather forecasters warned that tidal surges could reach a height of up to 3 meters (nearly 10 feet).

A side from work, Mamba said classes in colleges were also suspended from Tuesday to Wednesday. Grade and high school students were on vacation, he said.

Tuguegarao City Mayor Maila

Ting-Que urged the public to be vigilant and imposed a liquor ban, warning violators of arrests. Fishers were barred from venturing in the