Highest alert level raised as Philippines braces for Super Typhoon Usagi

Weather agency warns of ‘life-threatening’ tidal surges in coastal area as another tropical storm forms in the Pacific.

The Philippines has raised its highest storm alert and evacuated thousands of people as it braces for Super Typhoon Usagi, the fifth storm to hit the country in three weeks.

Packing sustained winds of up to 185km/h (115mph), Usagi is set to make landfall in the already storm-battered northern part of the main island of Luzon on Thursday, according to the national weather agency.

“Landfall at or near super typhoon intensity is likely,” the agency, PAGASA, said in its latest bulletin, adding that gusts could reach up to 230km/h (143mph). Luzon is the country’s most populous agricultural region.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr on Thursday urged residents in the affected areas to “heed the warning” of local governments.

“To those who have been ordered to evacuate, please do so for your own safety,” he said.

A series of storms has already killed 159 people in the last few weeks and prompted the United Nations to request $32.9m in aid for the worst-affected regions.

The national weather agency warned that the winds could cause “almost total damage to structures of light materials, especially in highly exposed coastal areas”, and “heavy damage” to buildings otherwise considered “low risk”.

“Intense to torrential rain” and potentially “life-threatening” coastal waves of up to 3 metres (9 feet) were also forecast over two days, with the storm warning raised to the highest level on a five-step scale.

The weather agency urged all ships to remain in port or immediately take shelter.

In northern Cagayan province, where the super typhoon is expected to make landfall, officials worked in the rain to move residents along the coasts and on the banks of already swollen rivers.

“Yesterday it was preemptive evacuations. Now we’re doing forced evacuations,” local disaster official Edward Gaspar told the AFP news agency by phone, adding that 1,404 residents were sheltering at a municipal gym.

“There are many more evacuees in nearby villages but we haven’t had time to visit and count them,” he said.

Cagayan’s civil defence chief Rueli Rapsing said he expects local governments to take 40,000 people to shelters, roughly the same number that were preemptively evacuated before Typhoon Yinxing, which struck Cagayan’s north coast earlier this month.

More than 5,000 Cagayan residents were still in shelters following the previous storms as the Cagayan River, the country’s largest, remained swollen from heavy rain that fell in several provinces upstream.

After Usagi, Tropical Storm Man-yi is also forecast to strike around the capital Manila this weekend.

About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the country or its surrounding waters each year, triggering floods, killing dozens of people and keeping millions in enduring poverty.

Researchers say storms in the Asia Pacific region are increasingly forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land because of climate change.

The Philippines is also often hit by earthquakes and has more than a dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

Rescuers ferry stranded residents from their flooded homes in Isabela province, on November 12, 2024, a day after Typhoon Toraji hit. The Philippines has issued new weather warnings as the fifth major storm in three weeks bears down on the archipelago [Villamor Visaya/AFP]

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Al Jazeera and news agencies