Typhoon shuts down Philippine capital

Typhoon Rammasun shut down the Philippines capital on Wednesday as authorities said the first major storm of the country’s brutal rainy season claimed at least four lives and forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate. Wind gusts of up to 250 kilometres (155 miles) an hour and intense rain caused chaos across Manila, as well as remote fishing villages, after Rammasun tore in from the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday night. ‘I thought I was going to die. I went out to look for gasoline in case we needed to evacuate, but it was a mistake,’ said tricycle driver Pedro Rojas, 35, as he nursed a cut head while sheltering at a town hall on the outskirts of Manila. ‘My tricycle rolled over twice after I slammed into sheets of rain. It was like hitting a wall... huge tin roofings were flying everywhere.’ One woman was killed on the eastern Samar island, and three people died when a wall collapsed on them about 100km south of Manila. With the typhoon still passing over the Philippines and many areas without electricity, the scale of the damage and potential number of fatalities was impossible to determine, according to AFP.