Second typhoon strikes Asia

MANILA, Philippines – The second typhoon in a week battered the rain-soaked northern Philippines today, adding misery to thousands of people, some of whom still perched on rooftops while several other Asian nations also reeled from flooding.

Typhoon Nalgae slammed ashore south of northeastern Palanan Bay in Isabela province with winds of 100 miles per hour and dangerous gusts of 121 mph.

It was making a similar path across the saturated Luzon Island as Typhoon Nesat, which earlier in the week killed at least 50 people, left 31 missing and thousands stranded and sent huge waves that breached a seawall in Manila Bay. Nesat also pummeled southern China and was downgraded to a tropical storm just before churning into northern Vietnam on Friday.

In the Philippines, nearly 400,000 hunkered down in evacuation centers and in homes of relatives and friends along the new typhoon’s path with heavy rainfall of about an inch an hour within the storm’s 340-mile diameter that put most of the northern provinces including the capital on alert.

Isabela authorities earlier shut down electricity in the province to prevent accidents from falling power pylons and snapped cables.

The howling winds toppled trees and blew away tin roofs of some houses in Isabela’s provincial capital of Ilagan. In nearby Luna township, a bus with about 30 passengers fell on its side on a rice field because of the strong winds, but no one was seriously injured, police said.

“The ground is still supersaturated and it cannot absorb more water,” said Graciano Yumul, the Philippines’ weather bureau chief. “This will just flow down to rivers and towns, and there is a big possibility that landslides, flash flooding and flooding could occur.”

He urged residents still refusing to leave their homes despite the floods to evacuate because the water was going to rise in the coming hours as Typhoon Nalgae dumped more rain.