The Philippine capital’s 12 million residents are readying for a possible direct hit from a typhoon after the storm slammed into the country’s central region on Wednesday, stranding thousands of ferry passengers.
“Since 1995, there has been no strong typhoon that has crossed this close to Manila,” Nathaniel Cruz, the chief weather forecaster, told reporters, after the capital’s alert level was raised.
Typhoon Xangsane was expected to hit the city on Thursday.
Schools in Manila and five provinces were cancelled and Cruz said the alert level, currently at 1, could be raised again.
Authorities at Manila’s international airport and sea ports were waiting to assess the strength of the storm before deciding whether or not to shut down operations.
Xangsane, with gusts of up to 100 miles per hour, hit the central Bicol peninsula early on Wednesday, trapping around 3,400 passengers as high seas and fierce winds halted ferries in 11 ports and grounded a handful of flights.
Disaster officials have warned of possible landslides and flash flooding from the winds. A high-pressure cell over mainland China has pushed Xangsane westward rather than northwest.
If it continues on its current path, the storm is expected to strengthen and hit the coast of Vietnam by early next week.
Residents living near the slopes of Mayon volcano in the central Philippine province of Albay were warned not to venture within a five-mile danger zone around its crater for fear winds would whip mud and rocks down the sides of the mountain.
Mayon, a popular tourist destination, has been spewing lava, mud, huge rocks and noxious gas since July but the government lowered the alert level around the volcano earlier this month.
Vulcanologists warned on Wednesday that there remained a “fair probability” of an explosive eruption at Mayon after they recorded seven volcanic quakes and 18 tremors in the past 24 hours.
Another active volcano, Taal, just 40 miles south of Manila, showed signs of “seismic unrest” late on Monday after scientists observed an increase in volcanic earthquakes.
“These quakes were accompanied by rumbling sounds,” the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said in a statement on Wednesday. “There is still no indication of an impending eruption.”
The Philippines sits on a seismically active stretch of the Pacific Ocean known as the “Ring of Fire” and is prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as well as flooding caused by typhoons and tropical storms.
In the worst disaster in recent years, more than 5,000 people died on the central island of Leyte in 1991 in floods triggered by a typhoon.
In 2004, about 1,800 people were killed or went missing in a series of storms. The toll included 480 who were killed when mudslides buried three towns in Quezon, an eastern province.
