Typhoon Parma (locally named Pepeng) ripped open houses and cut off power lines as it smashed into the northern Philippines on Saturday, bringing more devastation to the Southeast Asian country after deadly floods. However, the heavily populated areas of Metro Manila and Central and Southern Luzon were spared. Parma, packing winds of 175 kilometers an hour and gusts of up to 210 kilometers an hour, began lashing the northern province of Cagayan and surrounding areas about midday (0400 GMT). “The wind is very, very angry,” Cagayan regional police chief Roberto Damian said in a radio interview from his headquarters, about 400 kilometers from the Philippine capital. “I can see trees are being toppled inside our camp.... One sturdy Narra tree was uprooted and smashed a car and a house. We cannot go out,” he said in a radio interview before his line went dead. Cagayan is a mainly rural area with coastal towns and a population of just over a million people. Parma caused major damage in Tuguegarao, the capital of Cagayan with a population of 130,000, according to the city's mayor, Delfin Ting. “There's massive destruction of rooftops, and trees have been toppled,” Ting said. Other parts of the Philippines' main island, Luzon, were being hit with heavy wind and rain. Parma claimed five recorded fatalities. Tens of thousands of people had already been evacuated from coastal and low-lying towns across northern Luzon in preparation for Parma. Vast parts of eastern Manila remain knee-deep in water, and residents remained nervous about the impact of any more rain. Had Parma moved on its expected path, it would have hit Aurora province in Eastern Luzon Saturday morning and dumped more rains on Metro Manila and nearby localities, triggering floods and landslides to areas still reeling from the deluge brought by tropical storm Ketsana (locally named “Ondoy”) last Sept. 26.
