‘Pepito,’ sixth typhoon in three weeks, threatens Luzon, Visayas—PAGASA

After three successive typhoons barreled across the country in the past two weeks, two consecutive storms—”Nika” and Super Typhoon “Ofel” —left P1.3 billion in infrastructure damage and displaced 309,518 individuals this week.

A third one—to be called “Pepito” once it enters the Philippine area of responsibility—is expected to bring significant rainfall in Southern Luzon, Central Luzon and Eastern Visayas over the weekend, prompting the Bicol region to evacuate residents, the Office of the Civil Defense said.

“Ofel,” the fifth storm to threaten the country in just three weeks, smashed into the already battered northern Luzon.

It weakened over mainland Cagayan, where the highest storm signal was raised earlier in the day, while continuing to threaten Babuyan Islands Thursday afternoon.

“Evacuations are ongoing” in coastal and low-lying areas of Cagayan province, local civil defense chief Rueli Rapsing said.

He said local governments are expected to take 40,000 people to shelters, roughly the same number that were preemptively evacuated ahead of Typhoon Marce, which struck Cagayan’s north coast earlier this month.

He said more than 5,000 Cagayan residents were still in shelters following the previous storms.

This was because the Cagayan river, the country’s largest, remained swollen from heavy rain that fell in several provinces upstream, flooding communities downstream.

“We expect this situation to persist over the next few days,” Rapsing said.

Tropical cyclone wind signal no. 4 remained raised over Babuyan Islands and the northern and eastern portions of mainland Cagayan.

The state weather bureau also warned one to two more tropical cyclones may enter the PAR in December amid the “developing” La Niña phenomenon.

“Our forecast is that we expect one or two cyclones in December. And then in the first quarter, there are also one to two cyclones,” PAGASA deputy administrator for research Marcelino Villafuerte said.

The brutal wave of weather disturbances—beginning with “Kristine,” “Leon,” and “Marce”—has already killed 159 people, mostly from “Kristine.”

This prompted the United Nations to request $32.9 million in aid for the worst-affected regions.

“Typhoons are overlapping. As soon as communities attempt to recover from the shock, the next tropical storm is already hitting them again,” UN Philippines Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Gustavo Gonzalez said.

“In this context, the response capacity gets exhausted and budgets depleted.”

Nearly P1 billion in infrastructures, including roads and bridges were destroyed by the combined tropical cyclones “Nika” and “Ofel.”

Nine major roads in the Cordillera region and in Cagayan province remained impassable to all types of vehicles due to floods and debris from falling rocks. With AFP