MANILA – A strong typhoon destroyed homes, unleashed huge tidal waves and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee to emergency shelters as they swept across the northern Philippines on Sunday in the sixth major storm to hit the country in less than a month.

Typhoon Man-yi slammed into the eastern island province of Catanduanes on Saturday night with sustained winds of up to 125 miles per hour and gusts of up to 149 mph. The country’s weather agency warned of a “potentially catastrophic and life-threatening situation” in provinces in its path.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from the typhoon, which was forecast to make landfall on Sunday northwest of northern Luzon, the archipelago’s most populous region. The capital region of Metro Manila would likely be spared a direct hit, but was placed, along with outlying regions, under storm warnings and warned of dangerous storm surges on the coast.

“The rain was minimal, but the wind was very strong and had a strange howling sound,” Roberto Monterola, a disaster mitigation officer in Catanduanes, told The Associated Press by telephone. “Along a main boulevard here, tidal waves rose more than 23 feet near the seaside houses. It looked really scary.”

The entire province of Catanduanes was without power after the typhoon knocked down trees and power poles, and disaster response teams were checking how many more houses were damaged in addition to those damaged by previous storms, he said.

“We need tin roofs and other building materials, apart from food. The villagers are telling us here that they still haven’t recovered from the last storm and have been caught again by this typhoon,” Monterola said. Almost half of the island province’s 80,000 people were sheltering in evacuation centers.

Officials in Catanduanes were so worried as the typhoon approached that they threatened vulnerable villagers with arrest if they did not follow evacuation orders. More than 750,000 people took refuge in emergency shelters, including churches and a shopping mall, because of Man-yi and two previous storms, mostly in the northern Philippines, said Cesar Idio of the Office of Civil Defense and other officials provincial.

The rare back-to-back storms and typhoons that hit Luzon in just three weeks have killed more than 160 people, affected 9 million people and caused so much damage to residential communities, infrastructure and farmland that the Philippines may have to import more rice. a staple food for most Filipinos. In an emergency meeting as Man-yi approached, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. asked his cabinet and provincial officials to prepare for the “worst case scenario.”

At least 26 domestic airports and two international airports were briefly closed and inter-island ferry and cargo services were suspended due to rough seas, stranding thousands of passengers and commuters, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines and the of the coast.

The United States, a Manila treaty ally, along with Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei provided cargo planes and other storm aid to augment government disaster response agencies. Last month, the first major storm, Trami, left dozens dead after dumping one to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours on several cities.

The Philippines is beaten by approx 20 typhoons and storms every year. It is often hit by earthquakes and has more than a dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world.

Gomez writes for the Associated Press.