BANGKOK: A potentially catastrophic and erratic storm bearing down on the central Philippines is likely to cut a four-day path across the island nation, affecting 32 million people.
Half a million people have fled coastal villages and landslide-prone areas, many of them survivors of Haiyan, the strongest storm on record that hit the Philippines 13 months ago killing 7300 people and displacing 4.1 million others.
Families have crowded into churches, schools and other makeshift evacuation centres across the islands of Samar, Leyte and Cebu in what relief officials described as one the country's largest peacetime evacuations.
The new storm called Typhoon Hagupit weakened slightly as it moved across the Pacific on Friday and early Saturday, falling below ''super typhoon'' category.
But experts warned it would still be the strongest storm to hit the Philippines this year, slamming into the Eastern Visayas late Saturday with hugely destructive winds and storm surges.
Hagupit - Filipino for ''lash'' - packed wind gusts of up to 240 kilometres per hour and a thunderstorm 15 kilometres tall sat at its centre as it tracked towards the Philippines. The storm has a giant front of more than 600 kilometres.
''I'm scared,'' Haiyan survivor Jojo Moro told Associated Press. ''I'm praying to God not to let another disaster strike us again. We haven't recovered from the first.''
In Tacloban, the Leyte capital that was worst hit by Haiyan, 19,000 people have crowded into 26 evacuation centres after panic buying that emptied shop shelves and petrol stations on Thursday and Friday.
The town's shops that were looted in the chaotic days after Haiyan have been boarded up and sandbags stacked at entrances, as officials said they had learnt the lessons of last year.
''The people themselves are preparing and do not think twice about leaving their homes. They know what to do,'' said Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman.
Weather forecasters expect Hagupit - called Ruby, locally - is expected to move more than 800 kilometres north-west after landfall in Eastern Samar province through 47 of the country's 81 provinces and could reach as far as Manila, a city of more than 12 million people, many of whom live in low-lying areas vulnerable to severe flooding.
Airlines have cancelled more than 150 flights to central and southern Philippines as ports shut and sea travel was suspended.
Scientists say unusually strong storms to hit the Philippines in recent years are linked to climate change.
The country endures an average of 20 typhoons a year.
Half a million people have fled coastal villages and landslide-prone areas, many of them survivors of Haiyan, the strongest storm on record that hit the Philippines 13 months ago killing 7300 people and displacing 4.1 million others.
Families have crowded into churches, schools and other makeshift evacuation centres across the islands of Samar, Leyte and Cebu in what relief officials described as one the country's largest peacetime evacuations.
The new storm called Typhoon Hagupit weakened slightly as it moved across the Pacific on Friday and early Saturday, falling below ''super typhoon'' category.
But experts warned it would still be the strongest storm to hit the Philippines this year, slamming into the Eastern Visayas late Saturday with hugely destructive winds and storm surges.
Hagupit - Filipino for ''lash'' - packed wind gusts of up to 240 kilometres per hour and a thunderstorm 15 kilometres tall sat at its centre as it tracked towards the Philippines. The storm has a giant front of more than 600 kilometres.
''I'm scared,'' Haiyan survivor Jojo Moro told Associated Press. ''I'm praying to God not to let another disaster strike us again. We haven't recovered from the first.''
In Tacloban, the Leyte capital that was worst hit by Haiyan, 19,000 people have crowded into 26 evacuation centres after panic buying that emptied shop shelves and petrol stations on Thursday and Friday.
The town's shops that were looted in the chaotic days after Haiyan have been boarded up and sandbags stacked at entrances, as officials said they had learnt the lessons of last year.
''The people themselves are preparing and do not think twice about leaving their homes. They know what to do,'' said Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman.
Weather forecasters expect Hagupit - called Ruby, locally - is expected to move more than 800 kilometres north-west after landfall in Eastern Samar province through 47 of the country's 81 provinces and could reach as far as Manila, a city of more than 12 million people, many of whom live in low-lying areas vulnerable to severe flooding.
Airlines have cancelled more than 150 flights to central and southern Philippines as ports shut and sea travel was suspended.
Scientists say unusually strong storms to hit the Philippines in recent years are linked to climate change.
The country endures an average of 20 typhoons a year.
