MANILA, Philippines — Villagers in the northern provinces of the Philippines were forced to evacuate on Wednesday as a powerful typhoon approached the nation, still reeling from a the recent storm that left at least 182 dead and missing and emergency shelters full of displaced people.

Typhoon Kong-rey was last tracked 350 kilometers (217 miles) east of northern Cagayan province, with sustained winds of up to 185 km/h (115 mph) and gusts of up to 230 km/h (143 mph) . Forecasters said it could strengthen further offshore.

It was blowing northwest and was forecast to pass near the northernmost Philippine province of Batanes before slamming into southeastern Taiwan on Thursday.

“We are still recovering from the two previous typhoons and storms and here we are again,” Batanes Governor Marilou Cayco told The Associated Press.

“We are now going to supervise the forced evacuation of people, especially those whose houses were badly damaged by the last storm,” Cayco said.

Elsewhere in the northern Philippines, more than 300,000 people were displaced last week by Tropical Storm Tramiremained in emergency shelters as the new typhoon approached, Civil Defense Office officials said.

Forecasters also warned of “a life-threatening storm surge reaching 2 to 3 meters (6.5 to 9.8 feet)” that could be caused by Kong-Rey on the low-lying coasts of Batanes and the nearby Babuyan group of islands.

All ships and cargo vessels have been advised to remain in ports and those at sea should seek shelter or safe harbor as soon as possible until the winds and waves subside.

Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., who oversees disaster response efforts, ordered the forced evacuation of people from high-risk areas threatened by Kong-rey, which is locally called Leon.

“We always aim for zero casualties in disasters, so we urge the public to follow our protocols,” Teodoro said.

While Kong-rey was expected to lash the northern Philippines, its extended band of rain more than 600 kilometers (373 miles) wide could hit the entire northern main region of Luzon, the country’s most populous, said the government.

Tropical Storm Trami, which ripped through the northern Philippines last Friday, has left at least 145 dead and 37 missing, mostly from flooding and landslides, and has affected more than 7 million people in nearly 11,000 villages, mostly rural areas, the government’s disaster mitigation agency said.

More than 111,000 homes were damaged, many inundated by floods and swollen rivers. Trami dumped up to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours in some regions, triggering floods that swept away cars and trapped people on their roofs.

At the height of the attack last week, officials in the hard-hit Bicol region, southeast of the capital Manila, made a frantic appeal for more lifeboats to save thousands of villagers caught in rising floodwaters.

About 20 storms and typhoons hit the disaster-prone Philippines each year. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the world’s strongest tropical cyclones on record, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages and caused several cargo ships to run aground and crash into houses and people in the central Philippines.