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Five rescue workers have been killed after being swept away in the flash floods in the main Philippine island of Luzon.
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That flooding was a result of heavy rain from super typhoon Noru, whose rapid intensification caught forecasters by surprise.
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The super typhoon is the strongest storm to hit the Philippines this year, bringing wind gusts of more than 200 kilometers per hour. Laura Bicker reports.
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Super typhoon Noru crashed into the main island of the Philippines, winds gusted up to 180 miles an hour and there are fears of coastal surges, the torrential rain is already causing River levels to rise.
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Red Cross volunteers worked their way through low-lying neighborhoods, ushering the vulnerable to safety.
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This country is used to extreme weather alerts, but Noru developed into a super typhoon with very little warning.
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More than 8000 people have now sought shelter. - I evacuated the house that I'm living in because I'm scared, the floods there get really high and I don't want to repeat of what happened to me before.
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As this storm makes its way over land, people here can only wait and hope they've done enough to stay safe.
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Laura Bicker with that report will a short while ago, Laura gave me another update from the affected region of San Vicente.
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We're on the main road to San Miguel here, all day people have been trying to get through the flood waters are receding.
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But as you can see, I'm just gonna ask Titchen to move the camera around, you'll see that the flood waters as soon as you get off this Main Road get chest deep, and many of these houses, many of these neighborhoods are deluged.
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I've been in a couple of the neighborhoods this morning and up to chest deep, they are in water and many people are just sitting on their roofs handing food to one another.
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Around 74000 people overnight were taken to various shelters from churches to community centers, they were given food and other people have chosen to stay with relatives.
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But I'm told that many people didn't want to leave their homes because they were worried about looting.
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And this super typhoon formed extremely quickly, but there was time for aid agencies to get prepared.
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All of the warnings went out and it does seem that many people heeded those warnings and got to safety as soon as they could.
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In the middle of the night, on a boat there were five rescue workers and that boat seems to have overturned and five rescue workers have sadly died as a result.
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But during the disaster committee meeting this morning president Marcos said he was he did feel that at this stage, the Philippines may have got off lightly, we are waiting an update on that.
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But as you can see, many people won't feel that way, here they are with many of their possessions and all sitting waiting and hoping that at some point these floods will recede.
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I think it was quite interesting earlier when I was moving around the neighborhoods and kind of trying to speak to people, and I thought maybe they would talk about what they would need, new housing better, flood protection. This area has flooded before back in 2013.
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But that's not what they said to me, and when I asked this young women 21 year old Kelsey from our window, one of the first things to she said to me is please tell the world that they need to focus on climate change. Laura Bicker in the Philippines.