A powerful, slow-moving typhoon pounded through the central Philippines on Sunday, bringing howling winds that toppled trees and power lines and cut off communications to areas still scarred by a super-storm just over a year ago.
Typhoon Hagupit did not appear to have wreaked devastation on the same scale as last year’s deadly Typhoon Haiyan, but officials cautioned that the picture remained incomplete with many of the first areas to feel the storm’s force still cut off.
More than 1 million people had fled to shelters away from coastal areas and landslide-prone villages by the time Typhoon Hagupit slammed into the town of Dolores, on the eastern coast of Samar island, on Saturday night.
“We need to punch through up to Dolores to see the impact there, that’s where the landfall was, we need to see so we can report back to Manila,” Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas told a local radio interview from Samar.
The radio report described Roxas as traveling by motorbike to oversee workers using chainsaws to clear huge fallen trees.
Most of the houses, made of light materials, on both sides of the road were destroyed and residents lined the route asking for food, water and other supplies. Roofs were blown away while thatched houses were lifted and dumped meters away.
Hagupit, which days earlier had reached category 5 “super typhoon” strength as it churned across the Pacific Ocean, weakened on Sunday to category 2 as it made a second landfall at Cataingan town in the south of Masbate island.
There were no initial reports of the kinds of storm surges that were so destructive during Typhoon Haiyan, which killed more than 7,000 people across the central Philippines.
