Typhoon Kalmaegi makes landfall in Vietnam after 142 killed in Philippines

Typhoon Kalmaegi has made landfall in central Vietnam with strong winds and heavy rain, after killing at least 142 people across the Philippines.

Kalmaegi — one of the world’s deadliest cyclones this year — crashed into Gia Lai province late on Thursday, packing sustained winds of up to 149km/h (92.5mph) with much faster gusts, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said.

“The wind is so so strong, nothing can resist,” Vu Van Hao, 48, told the news wire AFP as he surveyed the shards of windows shattered by the storm in the lobby of a hotel in Gia Lai.

The storm produced waves as high as 10 metres (33 feet) as it hit the central region’s coast, according to Vietnam’s national weather forecaster.

“We here have never experienced such strong wind like this. It’s a natural disaster, what can we do?” Vu Van Hao told AFP.

Before hitting Vietnam, the typhoon wreaked devastation across the  Philippines, killing at least 142 people, and leaving another 127 people missing, as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr declared a state of emergency and warned of another incoming super typhoon.

The national civil defence office on Thursday confirmed 114 deaths, though that tally did not include an additional 28 recorded by Cebu provincial authorities. More than 500,000 Filipinos remain displaced.

The typhoon is so far the globe’s deadliest of 2025, according to disaster database EM-DAT.

“This is a huge typhoon with terrible devastating capacity,” Pham Anh Tuan, a senior official in Vietnam’s Gia Lai told AFP. More than 7,000 people had been evacuated in the area as of Wednesday night.

As Vietnam prepared for the storm, the government said it had placed more than 268,000 soldiers on standby for search and rescue operations. It warned of floods in low-lying areas and impacts on agriculture, including in the Central Highlands, the main coffee-growing region.

Schools closed Thursday and Friday in Gia Lai and Quang Ngai provinces, and more than 260,000 people in Gia Lai province had been evacuated, the government said.

The country also closed six airports, forcing authorities to cancel hundreds of flights.

Vietnam is in one of the most active tropical cyclone regions on Earth and is typically affected by 10 typhoons or storms a year, but Kalmaegi is set to be the 13th of 2025.

The country is still recovering from severe flooding in late October that affected thousands of households. The Environment Ministry said October’s rain caused more than 150 landslides, inundated 2,200 hectares (5,400 acres) of crops and flooded 103,525 houses.

Kalmaegi’s path across the Philippines

The typhoon, named Tino locally, devastated large areas of the Philippines as it made landfall in eight areas in the centre of the country on Tuesday, in what is officially the deadliest natural disaster to hit the Southeast Asian archipelago nation this year.

Scenes of widespread destruction have begun to emerge from the hardest-hit Philippine province of Cebu, from where the storm receded on Wednesday.

Many of the more than 200,000 people who were evacuated have returned to find their homes destroyed, vehicles overturned, and streets blocked with piles of debris.

The arduous cleanup effort has begun, with communities scraping mud from their homes and removing large pieces of debris from the streets.

On Al Jazeera.

Typhoon Kalmaegi #TinoPH has moved away from the Philippines but left a trail of death and destruction. At least 85 people are confirmed dead but that toll is likely to rise. Search and rescue workers are clearing mud and debris to find those who remain missing…… pic.twitter.com/gdX7enp49l

— Barnaby Lo 吳宗鴻 (@barnabychuck) November 5, 2025

“The challenge now is debris clearing,” Raffy Alejandro, a senior civil defence official, told local radio news outlet DZBB.

“These need to be cleared immediately, not only to account for the missing who may be among the debris or may have reached safe areas but also to allow relief operations to move forward,” he said.

Talking to news media following his meeting with disaster-response officials, President Marcos described the storm as a “national calamity”. He said declaring a national emergency will give the government “quicker access to some of the emergency funds” and prevent food hoarding and overpricing.

Marcos also warned of another storm approaching the northern Philippines – known internationally as Typhoon Fung-wong, and locally as Uwan – which he said “could be even stronger” than Kalmaegi.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said it expects Fung-wong to develop into a super typhoon by Saturday.

PAGASA said it could enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility late on Friday or early Saturday, and has “an increasing chance of landfall” in northern or central Luzon, the island on which the country’s capital, Manila, is located.