Posted at 08/07/2012
9:54 AM | Updated as of 08/07/2012 3:52 PM
MANILA -
Heavy rains since Sunday night flooded large parts of Metro Manila and other
parts of central and southern Luzon.
The red alert warning of PAGASA was still up over Metro Manila
as of posting, which means heavy rains in the next 2 hours and high risk of
serious flooding.
A forced evacuation was being undertaken in parts of Marikina
City as water level in Marikina River continued to rise.
PAGASA rainfall data recorded 222.6 mm of rainfall in the last 9
hours at Science Garden, Quezon City. During Ondoy, the rainfall recorded at
Science Garden was 341 mm in 6 hours.
Read the full article and related stories.
Read the full article and related stories.
Reuters – Tue, Aug 7, 2012
MANILA
(Reuters) - Deadly torrential rains submerged much of the Philippine capital
and surrounding areas on Tuesday, forcing nearly 270,000 people to flee their
homes with more flooding expected in the north of the country as a tropical
storm passes through the region, officials said.
Steady rains
for the past 10 days, killing more than 50 people, are set to continue until
Wednesday, the Philippines weather bureau said, fuelled by tropical storm
"Haikui" in the Philippine Sea northeast of Taiwan. The storm is
headed for China's Zhejiang province where more than 250,000 people have been
evacuated ahead of expected landfall late on Wednesday.
"It's
like Waterworld," said Benito Ramos, head of the Philippines national
disaster agency, referring to a Hollywood movie about a flooded world.
Schools,
financial markets, and public and private offices were ordered shut, including
outsourcing firms whose corporate clients are mainly from the United States and
Europe.
Disaster
officials said over half of Manila was swamped by floods as high as three
metres, worsened by a high tide and the release of water from dams in
surrounding provinces.
President
Benigno Aquino, in an emergency meeting briefly interrupted by a power failure
at the main army base in Manila, ordered officials to exert maximum effort to
aid residents in flooded areas. Officials have deployed army troops, police and
emergency workers with rubber boats and amphibious trucks.
The monsoon
rains, which dumped about 300 mm (12 inches) or three times the daily average
of 80-100 mm from late Monday to Tuesday, were the heaviest in three years, the
weather bureau said.
Typhoon
Ketsana, which swamped 80 percent of the capital in 2009, aided a monsoon
downpour of more than 450 mm (18 inches) in a 24-hour period.
MAJOR ROADS
INUNDATED
Most major
roads in Manila were inundated by knee- to waist-deep floodwaters. Some flights
were delayed or cancelled. Power, water and communications in flooded areas
were disrupted.
Some of the
affected residents were marooned on the roofs of their houses.
"There
are about 5,000 people here," said Ester Ronabio, a public school teacher
and volunteer in one of the temporary shelter areas in low-lying Marikina City
in the eastern part of Manila. "We can't control the flow of people."
In a sign of
the difficult scramble to move people to safety, Aquino appealed to an
anti-graft court to release dozens of rubber boats held as evidence in a case
against senior police officials for use in evacuation efforts.
Residents of
Manila expressed concern the rains were a repeat of Typhoon Ketsana which
killed more than 700 people and destroyed $1 billion worth of private and
public property.
"The
floods are so deep where we live, we don't want a repeat of Typhoon Ketsana a
few years ago," Melanio David, a father of four, told Reuters. "We
got scared so we evacuated last night."
REUTERS - Rescuers pull a rubber boat as they evacuate residents from their flooded homes in Marikina, Metro Manila August 7, 2012. Deadly torrential rains submerged much of the Philippine capital and surrounding areas on Tuesday, forcing nearly 270,000 people to flee their homes with more flooding expected in the north of the country as a tropical storm passes through the region, officials said.
What's
different in this rainfall and Ondoy
By Kim
Arveen Patria | Yahoo! Southeast Asia Newsroom – Tue,
Aug 7, 2012
(UPDATE) The rainfall caused by the
southwest monsoon in Metro Manila is almost as devastating to the volume of
rain in the 2009 typhoon Ondoy, an official on Tuesday said.
Accumulated rainfall from 4:45 p.m. on Aug. 6
to 3 p.m. of Aug. 7 reached 472 millimeters monitored from the Quezon City
Polytechnic University, even higher than Ondoy's accumulated 455 millimeters in
24 hours, Mahar Lagmay, who leads the inter-agency National Operational
Assessment of Hazards Project (Project NOAH), said in a phone interview.
Lagmay, however, noted that a comparison cannot
accurately be made as other observation posts have recorded lower rainfall
levels. He also noted that Ondoy's flood peaked earlier than this monsoon.
"We also have to point out the difference in time frame.
Rain due to Ondoy peaked for six hours while the rain currently caused by the
monsoon is over an extended period," Lagmay said.
The weather bureau as of its 9:30 p.m. update meanwhile kept
Metro Manila under a "red warning signal," noting that heavy to
intense (10-25 mm/hr) with occasional to frequent torrential (over 30 mm/hr)
may be expected in the next three hours.
There is no tropical storm within the Philippine area of
responsibility but tropical storm Haikui located 300 kilometers northeast of
Taiwan worsens the effect of the southwest monsoon, the Philippine Atmospheric
Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said.
In its weather advisory, Pagasa noted "occasional to
frequent rains over Luzon becoming moderate to heavy rains" in Metro
Manila and the provinces of Ilocos, La Union, Pangasinan, Tarlac, Zambales,
Bataan, Pampanga, Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite, Laguna, Batangas up to Wednesday.
Gradual improvement may be expected by Thursday until the
weekend.
"Expect landslides/flashfloods in mountainous areas and
floods in low lying areas," Pagasa said.
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