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Philippines braces for second typhoon in a week; aid groups worry
Written by: James Kilner
A man struggles to drag recovered belongings through mud caused by Typhoon Ketsana, locally known as Ondoy, as he prepares to move to an evacuation centre in Montalban Rizal, west of Manila October 2, 2009. REUTERS/John Javellana
LONDON (AlertNet) - The Philippines is bracing for another typhoon, even bigger and stronger than the storm that smashed its way across the archipelago last week and killed about 300 people. Already stretched by three major natural disasters in Asia, aid groups now worry that Typhoon Parma will devastate the north of the Philippines, where it is due to land at around 0100 GMT on Oct. 3, and that heavy rain from the storm will also worsen floods in Manila, the capital. "We're preparing for the worst," Glenn Quirino Maboloc, information officer for Oxfam in the Philippines, said by telephone from Manila. "We've had reports that Manila will be hit by the tail-end of this typhoon." About 700,000 people are living in evacuation camps in and around Manila and much of the capital is still flooded, but aid groups said they would have to temporally suspend their relief efforts while Typhoon Parma passes. In Manila, people were moving to higher ground or preparing to sit out the storm on the top floors of their homes and in the Luzon province of northern Philippines - expected to take the brunt of the storm - aid workers where evacuating people from their homes. "It's going to shake up the humanitarian system if Luzon gets badly hit," Maboloc said. "There are not enough funds to deal with the situation in Manila. It's a scenario we're dreading." Meteorologists have graded Typhoon Parma a level 4 storm, the strongest storm to hit the Philippines since 2006, while Typhoon Ketsana, which flooded Manila last week before crashing into Vietnam and Laos, was graded a level 3 storm. At level 4, the storm will damage buildings, uproot trees and destroy communications systems. But one of the main problems for aid groups is that the impact of Typhoon Parma on the north of the country is so hard to predict. Nick Guttmann, head of the humanitarian division at Christian Aid, said the Luzon area was a relatively vulnerable and densely populated rural area. "It's difficult to tell what the impact is going to be because you don't know for sure where it will hit and what its intensity will be," he told AlertNet. "But because of the devastation last week, we are very worried that this typhoon will also cause major devastation." And Typhoon Parma will be the fourth major natural disaster to strike Asia in a week, stretching aid groups' thinly spread resources even further. A few days after Typhoon Ketsana on Sept. 26, a tsunami smashed into a cluster of Pacific islands and an earthquake struck the densely populated coast of Indonesia killing hundreds of people. Now the Philippines, already damaged and weakened, has to wait for its second typhoon in a week.
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