Typhoon Xangsane churned towards Vietnam on Friday after killing 31 people in the Philippines, injuring hundreds and leaving a trail of widespread destruction.
In Manila, the stock exchange, currency market, schools and government offices remained closed for a second day as a huge mopping-up operation began. Slightly more than half of the main island of Luzon was still without power.
”The damage is city-wide, we have to work even in the side streets, in the barangays [villages] to restore order and normalcy,” Mayor Lito Atienza said, adding that the storm was the worst to hit the city in over 35 years.
Xangsane gained strength over the South China Sea, packing sustained winds of up to 140kph and gusts of 170kph, after roaring through Manila on Thursday.
The typhoon, travelling northwest, was expected to hit the central Vietnamese coastline at around 6pm GMT on Saturday, according to www.tropicalstormrisk.com.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung put the army on alert, and residents in the resort city of Danang were told to prepare for evacuation.
The storm was likely to skirt Vietnam’s key coffee-growing region and little damage to the crop was expected. The south-east Asian country is the world’s second-largest coffee exporter after Brazil.
Xangsane’s centre is currently around 600km north-west of Manila but the typhoon’s destructive path was still visible to the city’s 12-million residents with uprooted trees, toppled cars, billboard frames and electrical poles blocking streets.
Officials said it could take up to a week to clear and repair the capital at a cost of 210-million pesos ($4,2-million).
The stock market said it would see how quickly power was restored over the weekend before deciding whether to reopen on Monday. The central bank said it expected to resume peso trading on Monday.
Falling debris, flood waters and landslides killed 31 people according to police and disaster officials. At least 18 were still missing in the disaster. More than 200 people were injured and nearly 61 000 were displaced by the storm.
”The agricultural sector has suffered very, very severe damage, particularly our coconuts, the rice plantations, all fruit-bearing trees have been almost totally damaged,” said Fernando Gonzalez, governor of the central province of Albay.
The bill for damage to agriculture and infrastructure was estimated at 134-million pesos ($2,7-million) in six central provinces in the rural Bicol region. The government has yet to put a total cost on the impact of Xangsane.
Economic losses from the power outage alone could reach about 4,2-billion pesos ($84-million), the national grid operator estimated.
Tropical storms regularly hit the Philippines, with Xangsane the 13th typhoon to reach the archipelago this year. Forecasters said a new depression had been spotted more than 2 000km east of Manila and might yet develop into a storm.
”Maybe on Sunday it will enter the Philippine area of responsibility but it is not affecting any area in the archipelago yet,” Nathaniel Cruz, chief weather forecaster, said in a radio interview.
In the worst Philippine storm disaster in recent years, more than 5 000 people died in central Leyte island in 1991 in floods triggered by a typhoon.
In 2004, about 1 800 people were killed or went missing in a series of storms. The toll included 480 killed when mudslides hit three towns in Quezon, an eastern province. – Reuters