Philippines evacuates hundreds of thousands as super typhoon nears

by AFP Staff Writers
Manila (AFP) Nov 9, 2025

Nearly a million people have been evacuated and floodwaters were rising in the Philippines on Sunday before Typhoon Fung-wong's expected late-night landfall on the east coast.

The super typhoon, which comes just days after another storm ravaged the country, was working its way west with winds of 185 kilometres (115 miles) per hour near the centre and gusts of up to 230 kph as of 11 am (0300 GMT), the state weather service said.

With a radius spanning nearly the whole of the Philippines, Fung-wong is expected to bring wind and heavy rain to broad swathes of the archipelago nation, which last week saw more than 220 people killed by Typhoon Kalmaegi.

Schools and government offices were ordered closed Monday across the main island of Luzon, including the capital Manila, where nearly 300 flights have so far been cancelled.

Catanduanes, a small island the state weather service said could take a "direct hit", was being lashed by wind and rain early Sunday, with storm surges sending waves hurtling over streets along the coast and floodwaters rising in some areas.

"As we speak, they are feeling the impact of the typhoon, especially in Catanduanes, because the storm's eye is closest there," civil defence deputy administrator Rafaelito Alejandro said at a press briefing, adding that 916,863 people had been evacuated nationwide.

"The waves started roaring around 7 am. When the waves hit the seawall, it felt like the ground was shaking," Edson Casarino, 33, a resident of Catanduanes' Virac town, told AFP.

"Heavy rain is pouring now, and I can hear the wind whistling."

Video verified by AFP showed a church in the town surrounded by floodwaters that reached halfway up its entrance.

Flooding was also reported in southern Luzon's Bicol region, Alejandro said, adding officials had anticipated water would "rise in the Bicol River basin".

In Guinobatan, a town of about 80,000 in that region's Albay province, verified video showed streets that had become a raging torrent of floodwaters.

Typhoon Fung-wong is expected to bring about 200 millimetres (eight inches) or more rain in many places, according to government meteorologists.

Scientists warn that storms are becoming more powerful due to human-driven climate change. Warmer oceans allow typhoons to strengthen rapidly, and a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, meaning heavier rainfall.

- 'Strapping down the roofs' -

On Saturday, Catanduanes rushed to prepare for the onslaught, with residents tying down their houses with ropes and putting weights on their roofs.

"They decided to do our tradition of strapping down the roofs with big ropes and anchoring them on the ground, so they won't be blown away by the wind," provincial rescue official Roberto Monterola told AFP.

In Sorsogon, a city in southern Luzon, some sought refuge in a church.

"I'm here because the waves near my house are now huge. I live near the shore, and the winds there are now very strong," Maxine Dugan told AFP on Saturday evening.

Only days earlier, Typhoon Kalmaegi sent floodwaters rushing through the towns and cities of Cebu and Negros islands, sweeping away cars, riverside shanties and massive shipping containers.

The typhoon, the deadliest of 2025 according to disaster database EM-DAT, killed at least 224 people and left 109 missing, according to government figures updated Sunday morning.

On Saturday, rescue official Myrra Daven told AFP the approaching super typhoon had forced the suspension of search and rescue activities in Cebu, home to the majority of Kalmaegi's deaths.

"We cannot risk the safety of our rescuers. We don't want them to be the next casualties," she said.

Deadly Typhoon Kalmaegi ravages Vietnam, Philippines
Vietnam (AFP) Nov 7, 2025 - Typhoon Kalmaegi churned across Vietnam Friday, claiming five more lives after its devastating passage through the Philippines where the death toll rose to 188.

Kalmaegi unleashed record rainfall and flooding in the central Philippines this week -- sweeping away cars, trucks and shipping containers before lashing Vietnam.

"The roof of my house was just blown away," said Nguyen Van Tam, a 42-year-old fisherman in Vietnam's Gia Lai province where the storm made landfall late Thursday.

"We were all safe, (but) the typhoon was really terrible, so many trees fallen," he said, adding that his boat had survived intact.

Vietnamese authorities were still assessing the damage on Friday, but the environment ministry reported five dead, and 57 houses collapsed in Gia Lai and neighbouring Dak Lak.

Nearly 3,000 more had their roofs blown off or were damaged, it said, while 11 boats or ships sank.

Vo Thi Danh, 43, watched from higher ground as Kalmaegi ripped through Nhon Hai fishing village in Gia Lai, splitting boats into kindling and sweeping away the small seaside house where she lived with her family.

"The waves were so high, swallowing in the whole house," she told AFP in tears as she surveyed the rubble. "The house totally collapsed, nothing left."

It was one of seven homes clustered together in the fishing village that were reduced to chunks of concrete and twisted metal.

In the streets along Gia Lai's Quy Nhon beach, AFP journalists saw rescue workers and soldiers working with residents to clear uprooted trees, remove debris and collect sheet-metal roofs blown away in the night.

The state power company said 1.6 million clients lost electricity as the typhoon smashed the central coast, but service to a third of them had been restored by Friday morning.

Vietnam is in one of the most active tropical cyclone regions on Earth and is typically affected by 10 typhoons or storms a year.

Kalmaegi was the 13th of 2025 and hit the country with sustained winds of up to 149 kilometres (92 miles) per hour, according to the environment ministry.

Fast-moving Kalmaegi had already swept northwest toward Laos by morning with significantly weakened winds, but heavy rain was still forecast for much of Vietnam's central coast, the national weather bureau said.

The storm was next forecast to hit Thailand, which issued a warning Friday for heavy rainfall and flooding starting in the northeast and spreading to the rest of the country.

- Relentless rains -

Kalmaegi had initially battered the islands of Cebu and Negros in the Philippines before swooping back out to sea.

Floodwaters described as unprecedented rushed through the hardest hit Cebu province's towns and cities, where the hunt for missing people continues.

Philippine authorities raised the death toll to 188, with 135 still missing.

The typhoon hit central Vietnam as it was still reeling from more than a week of flooding and record rains that killed at least 47 people and submerged centuries-old historic sites.

The heavy rains starting in late October had drenched the former imperial capital Hue and the ancient town of Hoi An, both UNESCO-listed sites, turning streets into canals and flooding tens of thousands of homes.

Up to 1.7 metres (5 feet 6 inches) fell over one 24-hour period in a downpour breaking national records.

With more than 3,200 kilometres of coastline and a network of 2,300 rivers, Vietnam faces a high risk of flooding.

Before Kalmaegi, natural disasters had already left 279 people dead or missing this year and caused more than $2 billion in damage, according to Vietnam's national statistics office.