International News

MANILA, Oct 20, (APP/AFP) – One of the most powerful typhoons to ever hit the Philippines destroyed houses, tore roofs off schools and ripped giant trees out of the ground on Thursday, but there were no immediate reports of deaths. Super Typhoon Haima hit the northern province of Cagayan late on Wednesday night with winds almost on a par with catastrophic Haiyan, which was then the strongest storm to strike the disaster-prone Southeast Asian archipelago and claimed more than 7,350 lives in 2013. Haima roared across mountain and farming communities of the northern regions of the main island of Luzon overnight, and by morning a picture was emerging of widescale destruction. “Rice and corn plants as far as the eye can see are flattened,” Villamor Visaya, a university teacher in Ilagan, one of the main northern cities with a population of 130,000 people, told AFP by telephone. “Many houses were destroyed. I saw one school building crushed under a large tree… it was as if our house was being pulled from its foundations.