Five rescuers died during Typhoon Noru in the Philippines. They were in a flooded village, the authorities announced on Monday, September 26. “They had been deployed by the provincial government in a flooded area”, in Santa Maria, said Lt. Col. Romualdo Andres, police chief for the municipality of San Miguel, near Manila. According to San Miguel natural disaster manager Renan Herrera, they likely drowned in the floodwaters.
On Sunday, Noru inflicted high winds and heavy rain on the heavily populated main island of Luzon. The typhoon made landfall at 5:30 p.m. local time, or 11:30 a.m. Paris time, in the municipality of Burdeos on the Polillo Islands, which are part of the province of Quezon. Accompanied by winds of 195 km / h, it is the most powerful typhoon recorded this year in the country. The Philippines are hit by around 20 typhoons each year, a phenomenon which tends to worsen in due to climate change caused by human activities and the consumption of fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas).
Nearly 75,000 people were evacuated before the storm, with meteorological services warning of the risk of major flooding in vulnerable areas of the country. “You might think we’ve done too much”President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said during a briefing. “There’s nothing like overdoing it when it comes to disasters”he added.