Bloomberg

Philippines Issues Highest Alert for Typhoon Megi

October 17, 2010, 8:08 PM EDT
(Updates with latest position, wind speed in second paragraph.)

By Cecilia Yap and Stuart Biggs

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Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The Philippines issued its highest alert for Typhoon Megi as the strongest storm to hit the Asian nation this year heads for landfall in Luzon island today.

Megi, known in the Philippines as Juan, was 170 kilometers (106 miles) east of Tuguegarao City in northern Luzon, the nation’s most populous island, at 7 a.m. local time, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical & Astronomical Services Administration said on its website. The storm had sustained winds of 225 kilometers per hour, the weather service said.

Signal No. 4 was issued for the provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, Kalinga, Mountain and Ifugao on Luzon. A typhoon with the highest warning alert can uproot trees, severely damage rice farms and disrupt power and communication services, according to the weather agency.

“Juan may intensify further before making landfall,” Nathaniel Servando, the agency’s deputy administrator, told reporters yesterday.

Emergency services are on alert and ready to carry out preemptive evacuations, President Benigno Aquino said in a statement posted on his website. “We do not want to unduly alarm the public, but there is nothing lost by being prepared,” he said in the statement.

Food packs and medicines have been prepared in provinces that may be struck by the typhoon, the National Disaster Coordinating Council said in an advisory posted on its website. Schools in affected areas will be closed.

Command Centers

National Grid Corp. of the Philippines, which operates the country’s high-voltage transmission network, said it activated command centers at its main and regional offices to minimize the impact from the storm.

Megi may hit the eastern coast of Luzon with sustained winds of 268 kph, the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center said in an advisory. That would make it a Category 5 storm, the strongest, on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind scale and capable of “catastrophic damage,” according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Typhoon Conson left 102 people dead in the Philippines in July and destroyed or damaged more than 70,000 homes, the country’s disaster coordinating council said in August. An average 20 tropical cyclones visit the Philippines yearly.

Megi is the name of a catfish in South Korea and is related to the feeling of getting wet, according to the Hong Kong Observatory, which lists names assigned to storms in the northwest Pacific. It is the 15th storm of the season.

--Editors: John Viljoen, Aaron Sheldrick.

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To contact the reporters for this story: Cecilia Yap in Manila at cyap19@bloomberg.net; Stuart Biggs in Tokyo at ssbiggs3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Tighe at ptighe@bloomberg.net