500,000 Evacuate Central Philippines; Hagupit @ Category 5 Strength, Gusts @ +/- 145 mph
Half a million Filipinos fled their homes as a Super Typhoon Hagupit bore down on the islands, expected to bring with it winds of up to 143 miles per hour and threatening to devastate a region battered by a different hurricane just last year.
The vast Category 5-equivalent storm — packing life-threatening wind gusts of up to 143 mph and intense rainfall of up to three-quarters of an inch per hour — is expected to make landfall Saturday.
Filipinos were bracing for the typhoon to live up to its name, which is Tagalog for "smash." Many of those evacuated were still living in tents after the devastation caused last year by Super Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 people dead and missing.
"I'm scared," Haiyan survivor Jojo Moro told the Associated Press. "I'm praying to God not to let another disaster strike us again. We haven't recovered from the first." Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross, which is mobilizing an international rescue plan in case of disaster, said it had moved more than 100,000 people.
EDIT
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/super-typhoon-hagupit-500-000-flee-storm-approaches-n262341
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