Typhoon Phanfone pummelled the central Philippines on Christmas Day, bringing a wet and miserable holiday season to millions in the mainly Catholic nation, SIA reports referring to AFP.
Thousands were stranded at shuttered ports or evacuation centres at the height of the festive season on Wednesday, and residents cowered in rain-soaked homes as Phanfone leapt from one small island to another for the second day. The typhoon toppled houses and trees and blacked out cities in the Philippines' most storm-prone region, but no deaths were reported.
Though weaker, Phanfone was tracking a similar path as Super Typhoon Haiyan -- the country's deadliest cyclone on record which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing in 2013.More than 10,000 people spent the night in schools, gyms and government buildings hastily converted into evacuation centres as the typhoon made landfall Tuesday, civil defence officials said.
Flights, ferry services
More than 25,000 people trying to get home for the traditional Christmas Eve midnight dinner with their families remained stranded at ports on Christmas Day with ferry services still shut down, the coast guard said.Scores of flights to the region also remained cancelled, though the populous capital Manila, on the northern edge has so far been spared.
The Philippines is the first major landmass facing the Pacific cyclone belt.As such, the archipelago gets hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year, killing scores of people and wiping out harvests, homes and other infrastructure and keeping millions perennially poor.
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