Typhoon Megi Kills 10 in Philippines, Heads for China
October 19, 2010, 5:05 AM EDTBy Stuart Biggs and Aaron Sheldrick
(Updates with typhoon’s Hong Kong path in first paragraph.)
Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Typhoon Megi, which left at least 10 people dead as it crossed the Philippines yesterday, strengthened as it churned over the South China Sea on a path to Hong Kong, the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.
The storm, which made landfall as a supertyphoon on Luzon’s northeast coast yesterday before weakening over land, was about 350 kilometers (220 miles) northwest of Manila and 780 kilometers southeast of Hong Kong at 2 p.m. local time, the U.S. Navy said. Megi’s winds increased to 185 kilometers per hour and the storm was moving west-northwest at 11 kph.
Megi’s winds are forecast to strengthen to 213 kph as it crosses the South China Sea. That would make it a Category 4 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, capable of “catastrophic damage,” according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Megi may hit Hong Kong within three days, the U.S. Navy tracking map shows.
Megi will “severely” affect China’s coast, the nation’s National Meteorological Center said in a statement yesterday.
China’s State Disaster Relief Commission issued warnings for the southern regions of Hainan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian to prepare for relief operations yesterday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. On the island of Hainan, work began to shore up reservoirs, Xinhua said in a separate report.
Luzon Victims
At least 10 people died as the storm passed over Luzon, the most populous island in the Philippines, including three fishermen killed off the coast of Isabela province, Civil Defense Administrator Benito Ramos told reporters in Manila today. Three members of a family were killed by a falling tree in Pangasinan province, he said.
A state of calamity was declared in Isabela province, where Megi made landfall.
The storm, which had sustained winds of about 270 kph before making landfall, destroyed five houses and damaged 30 others as it disrupted power supply in 210 towns and cities, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said on its website today. Mobile phone networks were also damaged and some roads were blocked by landslides.
Four northern provinces may have power disruptions for as long as a week after Megi toppled 11 towers in a transmission line, National Grid Corp. said in a press briefing today. Manila Electric Co., which supplies the capital and neighboring areas, said there may be three-hour outages in parts of the city today.
Storm Ketsana
Rice crops in key growing regions in Isabela and Cagayan provinces may have been “severely affected” by Megi, the strongest storm to hit the country this year, the government said today. As much as 132,847 hectares (328,272 acres) may be affected, with power and communication outages making it difficult to get accurate reports of damage, the Department of Agriculture said in a faxed statement.
The Philippines is regularly battered by tropical cyclones that form over the Pacific Ocean to the east of the country. The government was criticized for its response last year when Tropical Storm Ketsana flooded Manila and parts of Luzon, leaving about 460 people dead and affecting almost 5 million.
Thousands of people died this year in China as torrential rain and floods inundated the country. Typhoon Fanapi, the 12th storm of the season, brought the heaviest rains in a century to China’s southern province of Guangdong in September, Xinhua News Agency reported at the time.
Storms in the northwest Pacific are designated as supertyphoons when their wind speed exceeds 241 kph, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Megi is the name of a catfish in South Korea and is related to the feeling of getting wet, according to the Hong Kong Observatory, which lists names assigned to storms in the northwest Pacific. It’s the 15th storm of the season.
--With assistance by Francisco Alcuaz Jr. and Cecilia Yap in Manila and Luzi Ann Javier in Singapore. Editors: Aaron Sheldrick, Jane Lee.
To contact the reporters for this story: Stuart Biggs in Tokyo at ssbiggs3@bloomberg.net; Aaron Sheldrick at asheldrick@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net; Amit Prakash at aprakash@bloomberg.net
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-19/typhoon-megi-kills-10-in-philippines-heads-for-china.html
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