MANILA — A. strong typhoon It destroyed homes, caused massive tidal waves and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee to emergency shelters as it crossed the northern Philippines on Sunday in the sixth major storm to hit the country in less than a month.

Typhoon Man-yi slammed into the eastern island province of Catanduanes on Saturday night with sustained winds of up to 195 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 149 mph. The country’s weather agency warned of a “potentially disastrous and life-threatening situation” in provinces along the route.

There was no loss of life due to the typhoon, which is expected to blow northwestward on Sunday along the north of Luzon, the most populous region of the archipelago. The capital region of Metropolitan Manila would likely be spared a direct hit, but along with outlying areas were placed under storm warnings and warned of dangerous coastal storm surges.

“The rain was very light, but the wind was very strong and made an eerie howling sound,” Roberto Monterola, a disaster mitigation officer in Catanduanes, told The Associated Press by phone. “The tidal waves along the main boulevard here, near the waterfront houses, reached over 23 metres. It looked really scary.”

He said the entire province of Catanduanes was left without power after the typhoon toppled trees and power poles, and disaster response teams were checking how many more homes were damaged in addition to those affected by previous storms.

“Apart from food, we need tin roofs and other construction materials. “The villagers tell us that they still haven’t recovered from the past storm here and are stranded again because of this typhoon,” Monterola said. Almost half of the island state’s 80,000 people were housed in evacuation centres.

Catanduanes authorities were so anxious as the typhoon approached that they threatened vulnerable villagers with arrest if they did not comply with evacuation orders. More than 750,000 people took shelter in emergency shelters, including churches and a shopping mall, as Man-yi and two previous storms hit mostly the northern Philippines, Cesar Idio of the Civil Defense Agency and other provincial officials said.

In just three weeks, rare back-to-back storms and typhoons have hit Luzon, killing more than 160 people, affecting 9 million people and causing so much damage to settlements, infrastructure and farmland that the Philippines is forced to import more rice can stay. a staple food for most Filipinos. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who held an emergency meeting as Man-yi approached, asked his Cabinet and state officials to prepare for a “worst-case scenario.”

At least 26 domestic airports and two international airports were briefly closed, and inter-island ferry and cargo services were suspended as thousands of passengers and passengers were stranded by rough seas, according to a statement from the Philippine Civil Aviation Authority and coast guard.

The United States, Manila’s treaty ally, along with Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, provided cargo planes and other storm assistance to bolster the government’s disaster response agencies. The first major storm, Trami, last month, killed scores of people after dumping one to two months of rain in just 24 hours in many towns.

The Philippines is being battered for approx. 20 typhoons and storms every year. It is subject to frequent earthquakes and has more than a dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world.

Gomez writes for the Associated Press.