MOSCOW, December 8 (Sputnik) – According to Reuters, 27 people have been killed and around 2,500 homes have been totally or partially destroyed by Typhoon Hagupit in the Philippines.
“We now have a total of 27 dead, most of them in Borongan, in Eastern Samar," the news agency quotes Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross as saying, adding that most of the dead drowned in floodwaters.
The raging hurricane, which is gradually losing its force and weakening into a tropical storm, has flattened buildings, toppled trees and cut power and communications.
“Our kitchen was wrecked. Around us, our neighbor’s homes were flattened like folded paper," Reuters quotes Arnalyn Bula, a 27-year-old bank employee from Dolores, a town in Eastern Samar as saying, Dolores is where Hagupit first made landfall.
Howling winds had pounded the walls of her aunt’s home where her family sought shelter, she added.
Hagupit, which means ‘lash’ in Filipino, is locally called Hurricane Ruby. The storm raged in from the Pacific as a Category 3 typhoon on Saturday night, sweeping through Samar Island and on to the smaller island of Masbate.
Despite the rising death toll and excessive damage, there was relief that Hagupit had not brought destruction on the scale of super-typhoon Haiyan, which last year killed thousands of people in the same areas of the central Philippines.
