4 million Filipinos in the direct path of Typhoon Mangkhut

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Priyadarshinee N
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4 million Filipinos in the direct path of Typhoon Mangkhut

4 million Filipinos in the direct path of Typhoon Mangkhut

Philippine authorities have begun evacuating thousands of buildings in the path of the most powerful typhoon this year, closing schools, readying bulldozers for landslides, and placing rescuers and troops on full alert in the country's North.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii categorized the storm as a super typhoon with powerful winds and gusts.

Forecasters said Typhoon Mangkhut could hit northeastern Cagayan province on Saturday. It was tracked on Thursday about 725 kilometres away in the Pacific with sustained winds of 205 km/h and gusts of up to 255 km/h, they said.

A massive rain-cloud band 900 kilometres wide combined with seasonal monsoon rains, the typhoon could bring heavy to intense rains that could set off landslides and flash floods, government forecasters said. Storm warnings have been raised in 25 provinces on the main northern island of Luzon, restricting sea travel.

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Ricardo Jalad, Office of Civil Defence chief, said more than four million people in the northeastern provinces of Cagayan and Isabela and outlying provincial regions are vulnerable to the most destructive effects near the typhoon's 125-kilometre-wide eye.

Nearly 48,000 houses in those high-risk areas are made of light materials and vulnerable to Mangkhut's ferocious winds.

Evacuations of buildings in risky coastal villages and island municipalities north of the rice- and the corn-producing province of 1.2 million people have started, and classes at all levels have been cancelled.

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