Fun Hot

MANILA —Schools in the provinces were closed. Authorities distributed canned goods and rescue boats and kept helicopters on standby as Typhoon Lupit slowed to a crawl along a course that forecasters said might hit the northern Philippines by Friday or veer toward Taiwan.

The government is determined to allow "zero casualties" for this typhoon, following two back-to-back storms in the past month that killed more than 850 people, National Disaster Coordinating Council spokesman Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres said Wednesday.

For the past week, army troops and disaster-relief officials have ferried tons of canned food and clothes and moved rubber boats and helicopters along the coast and inland mountains devastated by mudslides in the earlier storms.Selective evacuations from danger zones — low-lying areas, cliffs and mountain slopes — had begun, he said, while the coast guard grounded vessels after the weather bureau warned of an 8-foot wave surge along the beaches of northeastern Cagayan and Isabela provinces.
Lupit — a Filipino word for cruel — was spinning toward the northern Philippines with winds of 108 mph and gusts of up to 130 mph. It had been projected to make landfall in Cagayan on Thursday, but slowed down and may hit shore by Friday "or change course slightly and head for Taiwan," said the head of the weather bureau, Prisco Nilo.The storm is more powerful than Ketsana, which unleashed heavy downpour and the worst flooding in 40 years and around the capital Manila on Sept. 26, killing 420 people, and the subsequent Typhoon Parma, which left 438 dead.The homes of 7 million people were flooded and thousands remain in evacuation centers as the massive cleanup and rebuilding had only started.In Benguet province, where dozens of landslides buried houses with entire families, village heads were using megaphones to warn about the impending typhoon, and sirens will be sounded once it makes landfall, said Loreto Espineli, the provincial police chief."The frequent storms are making it very difficult for relief agencies to help rebuild. Another storm, or any calamity, would be sure to set back their recovery," said Filomena Portales, a spokeswoman for relief agency World Vision.

Thousands of Filipinos who live near coastlines and mountainous areas were evacuated Friday as the storm-battered country braced for Typhoon Parma, which is expected to make landfall Saturday. Parma, known locally as Typhoon Pepeng, comes on the heels of a weekend storm that killed hundreds in the Philippines and left most of Manila under water.President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo placed the country "under the state of calamity" in preparation for Parma's landfall. She ordered evacuations as a precautionary measure against floods and landslides, and asked weather officials to issue an hourly update. She also urged local governments to implement forced evacuations if need be.The order focuses on Camarines Norte, Aurora, northern Quezon, Polillo Island, Isabela and Cagayan. Parma had maximum sustained winds of 138 mph (222 km/hr), said Jennifer Delgado, CNN meteorologist. It is likely to move slow with torrential rainfall and strong winds, she said.Within the next 24 hours, Parma could develop into a super typhoon, the Philippines weather.

NOTE(9/29/09): For the record I think they're not really laughing maliciously but more of titillatingly screaming as if watching a horror movie. There is some laughing too but seems to me to be more like a laughing in the face of danger rather than at misfortune - don't forget the videographers are trapped too.