Although Typhoon Ruby (international code name Hagupit) has a wide coverage and is following the path tracked by Typhoon Glenda earlier this year, damage to agriculture would be minimal, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said on Monday. The typhoon also left at least 21 people dead.
Earlier reports pegged farm damage at P385 million, with three fatalities.
Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala said the damage to crops and farm infrastructure amounted to P1.02 billion. In terms of volume, production losses were pegged at 56,090 metric tons (MT).
“The damage has been minimal and hopefully will remain so even after the complete report reaches the national office,” Alcala said.
He said most of the standing rice and corn crops have been harvested weeks before the typhoon barreled through central and southern Philippines.
DA figures show that the rice sector suffered the brunt of the typhoon. Ruby destroyed 48,054 MT of rice planted in 32,329 hectares. Value of the damage is estimated at P840.5 million.
Damage to the corn sector amounted to P92.49 million. The typhoon destroyed 7,550 MT of corn planted in 23,416 hectares. Ruby also damaged 486 MT of high- value crops worth P8.03 million.
The DA said the fisheries sector suffered production losses reaching P48.22 million. “We are hoping that typhoon Ruby will not inflict huge losses on the livestock sector particularly on poultry in Calabarzon and Mimaropa, which were barraged by typhoon Glenda earlier this year,” Alcala said.
He, however, allayed fears that the typhoon will cause a disruption in the supply of chicken during the Christmas season. Alcala said the DA had asked local government officials and several broiler producers to secure chicken supply for the holiday season.
To ensure enough planting materials, the agriculture department has also “prepositioned” palay and corn seeds in all the regions within the path of Ruby.
For palay, some 58,952 bags were already sent to these regions days before the typhoon’s arrival, including 14,222 bags of corn and 2,337 bags of assorted high-value crop seeds.
Meanwhile, the National Food Authority (NFA) said in a text message that its rice inventory on areas affected in Regions 5 and 8 is enough to supply the needed volume of the main staple
For Region 8, about 5.9 million 50-kilogram bags were at the area, while Region 4 has 236,557 cavans in its inventory, according to NFA Director Rex Estoperez.
NFA Administrator Renan B. Dalisay said the National Capital Region’s rice inventory stands at 1.19 million 50-kg bags, while a total of 1.24 million 50-kg bags were already distributed to relief agencies and institutions including local government units. Dalisay said the food agency will also send additional rice to affected areas particularly in Maslog, Samar.
Ruby weakened on Monday, a day after it left at least 21 people dead and sent more than a million others into shelters, sparing the central Philippines the massive devastation that a monster storm brought to the region last year.
Shallow floods, damaged shanties and ripped off tin roofs were a common sight across the region, but there was no major destruction after Ruby slammed into Eastern Samar and other island provinces.
It was packing maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour (kph) and gusts of 150 kph (93 mph) on Monday, considerably weaker from its peak power but still a potentially deadly storm, according to forecasters.
The typhoon, which made landfall in Eastern Samar late Saturday, was moving slowly, dumping heavy rain that could possibly trigger landslides and flash floods.
Traumatized by the death and destruction from Supertyphoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan) last year, more than 1 million people fled to more than 1,000 emergency shelters and safer grounds.
Ruby was moving across a string of island provinces and would be near the bustling capital, Manila by early Tuesday, according to government forecasters.
Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada said more than 3,000 residents of a shantytown on the edge of Manila Bay have been evacuated due to possible storm surges.
“We’ve prepared and trained for this,” Estrada told the Associated Press, adding his greatest fear was widespread flooding.
Like villagers in the central Philippines, Estrada said Manila residents were
readily moving to safety because they’re still haunted by troublesome memories of Yolanda’s devastation last year.
“That’s still very fresh in their minds,” he said of Yolanda’s tsunami-like storm surges and killer winds that left thousands of people dead and leveled entire villages, most of them in and around Tacloban. Metropolitan Manila has a population of more than 12 million people.
Two people, including a baby girl, died of hypothermia in central Iloilo province on Saturday at the height of the typhoon, disaster-response agency chief Alexander Pama told a news conference. Another person died after being hit by a falling tree in the eastern town of Dolores, where the typhoon first made landfall, according to Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II.
Displaced villagers were asked to return home from emergency shelters in provinces where the danger posed by the typhoon had waned, including Albay, where more than half a million people were advised to leave evacuation sites.
Nearly 12,000 villagers, however, will remain in government shelters in Albay because their homes lie near a restive volcano.
While officials expressed relief that the typhoon had not caused major damage, they were quick to warn that Hagupit — Filipino for “smash” or “lash” — was still on course to cross three major central Philippine islands before starting to blow away on Tuesday into the South China Sea.
Several typhoon-lashed eastern villages isolated by downed telephone and power lines were out of contact, Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman said.
Army troops deployed to supermarkets and major roads in provinces in the typhoon’s path to prevent looting and chaos and clear debris, all of which slowed the government’s response to Haiyan last year. Authorities ordered offices and schools closed in the Philippine capital with Ruby forecast to bring heavy rain as it moves closer to Manila.
The government shut state-run offices while trading of stocks, bonds and currencies was suspended for the day. Gales from Ruby earlier slammed the central Philippines, with more than 30 power lines and transformers damaged in eastern Visayas and southern Luzon, causing power failures, the grid operator said on its web site. Ruby was downgraded from a typhoon by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
At least three people died in evacuation centers in central areas, authorities reported. Roofs were blown off bunkhouses in Tacloban city, Vice Mayor Jerry Yaokasin said by phone. “Our people are worried that this new calamity is going to stall our recovery” from Yolanda, which devastated the area in November last year, he said.
The government has evacuated more than a million people from danger zones as Hagupit—or “whip” in English—tests the leadership of President Aquino, who attracted criticism after Haiyan killed more than 6,200 people and left more than 1,000 missing. “Local governments are better prepared” this time, Palace Deputy Spokeswoman Abigail Valte said on DZRB radio. “It’s better to err on the side of prudence and on the side of caution.”
Suspended operations
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas suspended its clearing, settlement operations
on Monday following the order for government offices to close, Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo said in a mobile-phone message, while the Philippine Stock Exchange and Philippine Dealing & Exchange Corp. halted trading for the day. The benchmark stock exchange index fell 0.9 percent on December 5 as Hagupit, then rated a super typhoon, headed to the country.
The Philippines was the country most affected by weather-related events last year, according to Germanwatch’s global climate-risk index, citing absolute losses at $24.5 billion, or 3.8 percent of gross
domestic product. Haiyan alone caused more than $13 billion in economic damage, it said. UK research company Maplecroft ranks the Philippines second to Japan for being at risk from tropical storms.
Evacuation centers
With houses destroyed, people are expected to stay longer in evacuation centers and the government must increase its management of the camps and dispersal of food, Roxas said in a televised briefing from Eastern Samar, the first province to be hit by the typhoon.
A 1-month-old boy and a 62-year-old man died from illnesses in an evacuation center in Leyte province in the Visayas, police Superintendent Edgardo Esmero said by phone. In Iloilo, also in the Visayas islands, a 1-year-old girl and a 65-year-old man died from hypothermia, according to a civil defense unit report.
“It’s a really serious situation in the evacuation centers,” Jennifer MacCann, World Vision’s operation director for the typhoon response, said by e-mail. “Many of the families don’t know when they can return home and what they will find once they get there.”
Electricity outages
Hagupit brought gusts of as much as 75 knots (139 kilometers per hour), according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, which forecast the storm to track within 72 nautical miles of Manila later Monday before crossing into the South China Sea and curving southwest toward Vietnam. Its estimated rainfall within its 450-kilometer diameter is from 5 to 15 millimeters per hour, considered moderate to heavy, the country’s weather bureau said.
Sixteen provinces are without electricity, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC). Globe Telecom Inc. and Smart Communications Inc. networks were down in some parts of Leyte and eastern Samar, it said.
Philippine Airlines Inc. canceled 66 domestic flights on Monday, it said in an e-mailed statement. Airports were shut in Naga and Legazpi in Albay, Tacloban and Calbayog in eastern Visayas, while total flights canceled reached 183. More than 2,200 people were stranded in various ports.
As many as 12.9 million people may be affected by Hagupit, the United Nations’s Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System said on its web site.
In Manila, billboards were rolled down and sandbags were placed on the sea wall of Manila Bay, with the capital under the second-lowest alert in a four-scale storm warning system. Heavy to intense rain in the city is possible, according to forecasters.
The Department of Trade and Industry’s Consumer Protection Group is directing retailers to observe the price freeze in areas declared under state of calamity (SOC).
In a text message to reporters, Trade Undersecretary for Consumer Protection Victorio Mario A. Dimagiba said as per the latest NDRRMC situation report, the province of Albay is under a SOC and as such, as the law provides, a price freeze is imposed in the area.
According to Section 6 of the Price Act, “Price freeze for basic necessities is implemented for 60 days unless lifted…. Prices of basic necessities in areas under a state of calamity shall automatically be frozen at their prevailing prices or placed under automatic price control whenever.”
with Marvyn Benaning, Catherine N. Pillas, AP, Bloomberg News
Image credits: Kevin Dela Cruz