Typhoon Yinxing hits Philippines, flooding villages and damaging airports

Typhoon Yinxing battered the northern Philippines with floods and landslides before blowing away from the country on Friday, leaving two airports damaged and aggravating a calamity caused by back-to-back storms that hit in recent weeks.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from Yinxing, the 13th major storm to hit the disaster-prone Southeast Asian archipelago this year.

The typhoon, locally called Marce, was last tracked over the South China Sea about 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of the northern Philippine province of Ilocos Norte with sustained winds of up to 150 kilometers (93 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 205 kph (127 mph), according to government forecasters. It is expected to weaken further before hitting Vietnam.

The typhoon flooded villages, toppled trees and electricity poles, and damaged houses and buildings in Cagayan province, where Yinxing made landfall Thursday afternoon, provincial officials said. More than 40,000 villagers were evacuated to safer ground in the province.

In the northernmost island province of Batanes, Gov. Marilou Cayco said Yinxing’s fierce winds and rain blew away roofs of houses and damaged seaports and two domestic airport terminals.

More details of damage, including in two northern mountain towns hit by landslides, were expected after provinces battered by the typhoon complete an assessment, officials said.

The new damage will complicate recovery efforts from two powerful storms that lashed the northern region in recent weeks.

Tropical Storm Trami and Typhoon Kong-rey left at least 151 people dead in the Philippines and affected nearly 9 million others, mostly in the northern and central provinces. More than 14 billion pesos ($241 million) in rice, corn and other crops and infrastructure were damaged.

Trami dumped one to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours in some regions. In the hardest-hit province of Batangas, south of Manila, at least 61 people died in floods and landslides.

More than 630, 000 people were still displaced due to Trami and Kong-rey as of Thursday, officials said, including 172,000 who remained in emergency shelters as Yinxing blew across the country's mountainous north.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. decided not to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru next week to focus on recovery efforts, Communications Secretary Cesar Chavez said.

In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages and caused ships to run aground and smash into houses in the central Philippines.

The archipelago also lies in a region often hit by earthquakes and has more than a dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world.