Strong waves from Typhoon Hagupit battered a coastal village in Legazpi, Philippines. (Associated Press photo)
A giant storm swept out of the Philippines today after killing at least 27 people and devastating remote coastal communities, but there was relief it spared the capital and other areas from disaster.
Hagupit struck the far eastern island of Samar on Saturday with winds of 210 kilometres (130 miles) an hour, making it the most powerful storm to hit the Philippines this year and threatening widespread destruction.
But the typhoon steadily weakened as it travelled west across the central Philippines, passing close to the capital of Manila on Monday night with only a fraction of the forecast torrential rain.
After a series of catastrophic storms in recent years killed thousands, President Benigno Aquino spearheaded what the United Nations said was one of the biggest peacetime evacuation efforts ever.
Aquino issued nationwide orders to ensure there was no repeat of Super Typhoon Haiyan, which claimed more than 7,350 lives as it devastated entire communities in November last year.
Nearly 1.7 million people sheltered in evacuation centres as Hagupit passed their areas, according to government figures, and authorities hailed the strategy as a template for coping with future disasters.
"One of the lessons (from Haiyan) was to evacuate before the storm hits, evacuate if you live near the sea, evacuate if you live near trees whose branches might fall on you. That lesson was learnt," Philippine Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon told AFP.
Gordon said another crucial factor was Hagupit did not generate storm surges, compared with Haiyan when walls of seawater more than two storeys high laid waste to hundreds of thousands of coastal homes.
'Thankful' In Manila, tens of thousands of people, mostly the city's poorest residents who live in shanty homes along the coast and riverbanks, spent Monday night in evacuation centres to wait out the storm.
They returned to their homes today in drizzly weather after only moderate rain and no major flooding throughout the night.
"I'm relieved and thankful that I still have my house," 63-year-old Corazon Macario told AFP as she prepared to leave a Manila evacuation centre and head back to the riverside shanty she shares with her husband and seven relatives.
"But I pity those who have lost their homes in the Visayas."
Macario was referring to the central islands of the Southeast Asian archipelago that felt the full force of Hagupit and Haiyan.
They include Samar, one of the nation's poorest islands about 600 kilometres southeast of Manila that has long suffered because it is regularly the first to be hit by storms that sweep in from the Pacific Ocean.
Most of the 27 people reported to have been killed were in Samar, according to the Red Cross.
Emergency The military flew emergency flights with food, water and other essentials from Cebu to the worst-affected areas on Samar today.
Interior Minister Manuel Roxas said 200,000 people were believed to be in need of help on eastern Samar, but this could rise as more comprehensive assessments were carried out in isolated communities.
"The emergency phase is over and the patient has started to stabilise," Roxas, who has been stationed in Samar since before the storm struck, said in a nationally televised briefing.
"What is most important is we feed the patient and gather accurate data so that we know how many food packs need to be distributed."
In San Julian, a poor farming and fishing town on Samar, mother-of-four Rosario Organo sat with a daughter in front of their ruined bamboo and palm thatch home on Tuesday.
"My only wish is that my family could get a good night's sleep," Organo, 41, told AFP as neighbours sifted through the debris of their destroyed houses.
On the other side of the country, Hagupit passed out of the Philippines today morning with sustained winds of just 60 kilometres an hour.