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In the Philippines, survivors of most powerful typhoon of 2020 still live in fear
- Hundreds of families in the nation’s ‘disaster capital’, Albay province, are still waiting for new homes after Typhoon Goni pounded the region last November
- About one-quarter of the storms and typhoons to hit the Philippines every year affect the impoverished region, wiping out crops, homes and infrastructure
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A year after a powerful storm sent an avalanche of volcanic rock and sand crashing down, burying her house, Filipino food vendor Florivic Baldoza still lives in an evacuation centre.
As global warming brings increasingly extreme weather, she now fears “nowhere is safe”.
Hundreds of families from poor villages around Mayon volcano in Albay province on the Philippines’ most populous island of Luzon are waiting for new homes after Typhoon Goni pounded the region last November.
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Typhoon Goni, Philippines’ strongest storm of 2020, kills at least 10 people
Typhoon Goni, Philippines’ strongest storm of 2020, kills at least 10 people
“That’s the strongest I’ve ever experienced,” said Baldoza, 40, standing on a mound of dark sand that now covers the house she once shared with her husband and two teenage daughters.
Several hundred thousand people fled as Goni barrelled towards the archipelago nation – ranked as one of the world’s most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
But some residents in San Francisco village – including Baldoza’s family – ignored warnings to shelter in a school, confident a river dyke built several years ago would protect them from flooding.
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