Five rescuers dead amid Super Typhoon Karding

Five rescuers were killed as Super Typhoon Karding struck the Philippines’ north, bringing floods and power outages as well as prompting officials to cancel schools and shut down government operations in the nation’s capital and surrounding province.

Before dusk on Sunday, the most potent typhoon to strike the nation this year made landfall in Burdeos town in Quezon province. It weakened as it moved over the major Luzon area overnight. Numerous individuals were forcibly relocated to emergency shelters.

The five rescuers, who were using a boat to assist locals caught in flood waters, were hit by a crumbled wall and then reportedly perished in the raging floods, according to Daniel Fernando, the governor of Bulacan province north of Manila.

“They were living heroes who were helping save the lives of our countrymen amid this calamity,” Fernando told the DZMM radio network. “This is really very sad.”

A man was hurt in Polillo island in the northeastern Quezon province when he fell over the roof of his home.

In Quezon alone, authorities said that more over 17,000 people were relocated from high-risk villages vulnerable to tidal surges, floods, and landslides to emergency shelters.

In the metropolitan area of Manila, which was battered by intense wind and rain overnight, more than 3,000 individuals were evacuated for their safety. In spite of the fact that it was bright in the morning, the capital and the surrounding provinces decided to cancel classes and government activity on Monday.

In a televised meeting with the president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the energy secretary, Raphael Lotilla, stated that repair workers were working to restore electricity to the whole typhoon-affected northern provinces of Aurora and Nueva Ecija on Monday.

Marcos commended authorities for removing thousands of people to safety in advance of the typhoon, which despite Typhoon Karding’s potentially catastrophic fury, saved a significant number of fatalities.

Prior to making landfall in the Philippines, Karding suffered a “explosive intensification,” according to Vicente Malano, director of the weather service in the Philippines.

In just 24 hours, Karding went from having continuous winds of 85 km/h (53 mph) on Saturday to a super typhoon with sustained winds of 195 km/h and gusts as high as 240 km/h at its peak late Sunday.

According to the weather service, Karding had sustained winds of 140 km/h and gusts of 170 km/h by Monday morning. It was also heading westward in the South China Sea at a speed of 30 km/h.

One of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, Typhoon Haiyan, struck the central Philippines in 2013 and left more than 7,300 people dead or missing. It also demolished entire communities, washed ships inland, and forced more than 5 million people from their homes.