Two typhoons a test of Philippine resilience as Fung-wong claims 25 lives

Challenge now is to move beyond crisis management and invest in prevention

- Mara Cepeda Philippines Correspondent

Residents looking for belongings on Nov 11 in front of a house damaged by storm surges after Typhoon Fung-wong hit the province of Pangasinan in the Philippines. Just days before Fung-wong struck, Typhoon Kalmaegi hit the central Philippines and left more than 200 dead, mostly in Cebu province.

(REUTERS)

When Super Typhoon Fung-wong barrelled across the main island of Luzon in the Philippines at the weekend, torrential rain swallowed homes and snapped power lines, and entire villages vanished under flood waters.

The storm's sheer power had many bracing themselves for the worst.

When skies cleared and the typhoon moved towards Taiwan, officials reported 25 deaths nationwide as at 10pm on Nov 11. One death is one too many, but given the scale of Fung-wong's fury, many Filipinos were grateful that the toll was not much higher.

The authorities credited this to a preemptive evacuation that moved 1.4 million people out of harm's way before landfall, part of a playbook honed through hard lessons from past disasters.

"Our preemptive evacuation was a huge factor in saving lives during Fung-wong," Office of Civil Defence (OCD) deputy administrator Bernardo Alejandro IV said in a Nov 10 press briefing. "We can attribute it to the cooperation of our countrymen and the implementation of our local government units' protocols."

Some 2.4 million individuals were affected across 6,900 villages, said the OCD, with 804,000 families sheltering in 11,000 evacuation centres as at Nov 11. At least 4,100 houses were damaged, while assessments are ongoing for agriculture and infrastructure losses.

Still, for a super typhoon that battered the eastern and northern coasts and drenched the entire country, Fung-wong is being seen as proof that the Philippines' hard-won disaster lessons a decade after the deadly 2013 Super Typhoon Haiyan have begun to pay off.