Typhoon Melor sends 750,000 on the run in central Philippines
About 750,000 people have been evacuated from the central Philippines as a typhoon made landfall dumping heavy rain which could cause flooding, landslides and storm surges, authorities say.
Typhoon Melor landed, Monday morning, on tiny Batag Island in the eastern Philippines, and a second landfall is expected in Sorsogon province.
Majority of the preemptively evacuated people are from southern Luzon.
According to officials of the weather bureau, the typhoon was packing winds of 150 km/h with gusts of up to 185 km/h and heavy to intense rain within its 300-kilometre diameter.
About 20 storms and typhoons hit the Philippines each year.
In November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest typhoon on record to make landfall, left more than 7,300 people dead and missing as it leveled entire villages and swept walls of seawater into parts of the central Philippines.
Already, aid agencies have prepared post-disaster assistance kits and put their response teams on standy, Thomson Reuters Foundation reports..
