As weather experts warned of coastal flooding ahead of the approach of Tropical Storm Fengshen, rescue officials said.
The eye of the storm was forecast to brush past Catanduanes, an impoverished island of 270,000 people, later in the day with gusts of up to 80 kilometers (50 miles) an hour.
Fengshen will bring heavy rainfall, along with a “minimal to moderate risk” of coastal flooding from 1-2 meter (3-2 foot) waves being pushed ashore by the disturbance, the government weather service said.
More than 9,000 residents of Catanduanes moved to safer ground, the provincial disaster office said, in a well-rehearsed routine on the island that is often the first major landmass hit by cyclones that form in the western Pacific Ocean.
