A powerful typhoon bearing down on the Philippines may not be as destructive as feared since it has changed course and should only clip the far north of the archipelago later today, officials said.
Typhoon Parma, centred about 120 km east of the main island of Luzon and moving northwest at 17 km per hour, brought rain and strong winds to the Philippines' eastern seaboard, but there were no reports of casualties.
The storm system has so far largely spared Manila and other densely populated areas on the west coast where nearly 300 people were killed in flash floods a week ago from an earlier storm, Typhoon Ketsana.
A storm signal posted for the capital region overnight has been lifted, but officials warned nearly half a million people living in shelters in and around Manila after their homes were flooded last week to stay put.
"There is still a risk of rain," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said on national television. "We ask the evacuees to stay one more night in evacuation centers.
Authorities in Taiwan issued a sea warning as Parma was likely to enter its southern waters in the next few days.
On the Philippines' east coast, about 2,600 people were left stranded because of impassable roads in the Bicol region and on the island of Catanduanes, relief officials said.
Troops are evacuating entire communities from the east coast and almost 100,000 have already been shifted to safer areas, officials said. Arroyo declared a nationwide calamity yesterday to allow local governments to access emergency funds and cap the prices of essential goods.
Officials said some 5.5 billion pesos ($115 million) in crops, mostly rice about to be harvested, were damaged by Ketsana last week. Parma is expected to hit rice and corn lands in the Cagayan Valley region in the north.
The Asia-Pacific region has been hit by a series of natural disasters in recent days, including Ketsana that killed more than 400 in the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
Tens of thousands were also displaced in southern Laos and flash floods were reported in northern Thailand.
Reuters