Entire villages lay submerged and scores of towns remained without electricity yesterday as Typhoon Uwan left the Philippines after killing at least five people and displacing more than a million.
Uwan, with a footprint that spanned nearly the entire archipelago, slammed into the eastern seaboard as a "super typhoon" Sunday evening, uprooting trees and swamping towns in its path.
It landed days after Typhoon "Tino" swept through the Visayas, killing at least 224 people.
"Uwan" continued to weaken while moving away from Ilocos Region even as wind signals of up to Signal No. 2 remained raised in several parts of northern Luzon.
State weather bureau PAGASA said "Uwan" will follow a recurving path and turn northward today (Tuesday) while moving over the waters southwest of Taiwan.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday directed government agencies to maintain nonstop relief operations and road rehabilitation efforts in areas battered by "Uwan."
The Department of Social Welfare and Development reported that around 100,050 families in the Bicol region were affected by the typhoon. In Camarines Sur alone, some 44,000 families were displaced, while another 20,000 were affected in Quezon province.
Meanwhile, the Office of Civil Defense also reported that Pangasinan was the hardest hit by flooding, prompting preemptive evacuations of more than 426,000 families. Floodwaters have since begun to subside, but rescue and clearing operations remain ongoing in the province.
The Department of Public Works and Highways has begun repairing damaged roads and clearing debris to restore access to affected areas and expedite the delivery of relief goods.
State-run National Electrification Administration said more electric cooperatives (ECs) reported total power outages, affecting almost 4.8 million consumers as of yesterday.
The President also praised local governments, first responders, and volunteers for their swift action as "Uwan" tore across Luzon, saying preemptive evacuations carried out were key to saving lives.
"Your prompt action made a huge difference," Mr. Marcos said in a social media post.
Cleanup efforts were underway yesterday from Cagayan province in the far north to hard-hit Catanduanes island.
In Cagayan, provincial rescue chief Rueli Rapsing said a flash flood in neighboring Apayao province had caused the Chico River to burst its banks, sending nearby residents scrambling for higher ground.
"We received reports around six in the morning ... that some people were already on their roofs," he said.
More than 5,000 people were safely evacuated before the overflowing Cagayan River buried the small city of Tuguegarao about 30 kilometers away.
"Tuguegarao is underwater now," Rapsing said.
The storm's death toll rose after five-year-old twins and an elderly man in two northern Luzon provinces were reported killed in landslides.
The children were killed at around 2 a.m. as their family slept inside their home, said civil defense officer Alvin Ayson. A mudslide killed the man barely an hour later, local authorities said.
The storm's first fatality came a day earlier in Samar province, which was also hit hard by Typhoon "Tino" a week earlier.
Another death was confirmed on Catanduanes island, where storm surges sent waves hurtling over streets and floodwaters into homes by early Sunday morning.
"The waves started roaring around 7:00 am. When the waves hit the seawall, it felt like the ground was shaking," resident Edson Casarino, 33, told Agence France Presse on Sunday.
There was also major flooding in southern Luzon's Bicol region, where verified video showed streets transformed into raging torrents of water.
More than 1.4 million people nationwide were evacuated in the face of the storm. With AFP