Super typhoon kills 3

CAUAYAN, Philippines (AP):

The strongest cyclone in years to crash into the Philippines killed at least three people on Monday, leaving a wasteland of fallen trees and power poles and sending thousands scampering to safety in near-zero visibility. A retired general said bracing for the onslaught was like preparing for war.

Super Typhoon Megi, blowing across the northern Philippines, was forecast next to head toward China and Vietnam, where recent floods unrelated the storm have caused 30 deaths.

On Monday, strong currents on Vietnam's flooded main highway swept away a bus and 20 of its passengers, including a boy pulled from his mother's grasp. In China, authorities evacuated 140,000 people from a coastal province ahead of the typhoon.

Megi packed sustained winds of 140 miles (225 kilometres) per hour and gusts of 162 mph (260 kph) as it made landfall midday Monday at Palanan Bay in Isabela province, felling trees and utility poles and cutting off power, phone and Internet services. Its ferocious wind slightly weakened while crossing the mountains of the Philippines' main northern island of Luzon.

Riding out the typhoon

With more than 4,150 Filipinos riding out the typhoon in sturdy school buildings, town halls, churches and relatives' homes, roads in and out of coastal Isabela province, about 200 miles (320 kilometres) northeast of Manila, were deserted and blocked by collapsed trees, power lines and debris.

One man who had just rescued his water buffalo slipped and fell into a river and drowned in Cagayan province, near Isabela.