A Storm That Defines the Season
Typhoon Kalmaegi—known locally in the Philippines as Tino—has unleashed devastation across the central Philippines, leaving at least one dead, forcing over 150,000 evacuations, and disrupting vital infrastructure. As the 20th tropical cyclone to hit the country in 2025, Kalmaegi underscores the relentless barrage of extreme weather events battering the region. Now heading toward Vietnam, the storm threatens to deepen an already dire humanitarian crisis in Southeast Asia, where successive floods and typhoons have strained both national and local capacities.
The Philippines: Bracing Against Nature’s Fury
Kalmaegi made landfall near Silago in Southern Leyte during the early hours of November 4, packing winds of up to 150 km/h and gusts reaching 205 km/h. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) issued its second-highest storm alert across the Visayas region, warning of life-threatening floods and storm surges up to three meters high.
The typhoon left a trail of destruction—houses were torn apart, roads submerged, and power lines snapped. In Cebu and Leyte, floodwaters inundated communities, forcing residents to flee to higher ground. Tragically, one elderly man drowned in Southern Leyte as widespread power outages paralyzed emergency services. The government, learning from past disasters, mobilized military units for rescue operations and allocated emergency funds for food, water, and medical supplies.
Airports were forced to suspend over 160 flights, while maritime authorities grounded vessels and restricted sea travel. Despite these disruptions, early evacuations helped minimize casualties—a reflection of improved disaster response mechanisms honed through years of experience with tropical storms.
A Nation Under Strain: Disasters in Succession
The Philippines’ encounter with Kalmaegi comes on the heels of Super Typhoon Ragasa, which ravaged northern Luzon just two months earlier. With infrastructure still under repair and emergency budgets depleted, Kalmaegi has intensified the pressure on national and local authorities.
The country’s exposure to around 20 cyclones annually highlights the urgent need for resilient infrastructure and long-term adaptation strategies. Successive disasters—typhoons, floods, and earthquakes—have eroded community coping capacities and revealed the limitations of existing disaster management systems. The government now faces the dual challenge of immediate relief and sustainable recovery amid a tightening fiscal environment.
Vietnam on High Alert: Preparing for the Next Landfall
As Kalmaegi exits the Philippines and intensifies over the South China Sea, Vietnam braces for its arrival. Forecasts from the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting warn of wind speeds reaching 166 km/h, coupled with torrential rainfall and the threat of flash floods.
Vietnam’s central provinces, still reeling from record floods that killed at least 37 people in late October, are now on high alert. Evacuation plans are underway, and the government is mobilizing supplies of food, water, and medicine to vulnerable communities. Authorities are reinforcing riverbanks, halting fishing operations, and warning residents in mountainous areas of possible landslides.
With farmlands submerged and infrastructure weakened by successive disasters, the upcoming landfall poses severe risks to food security, livelihoods, and regional supply chains.
Climate Change and Regional Fragility
Kalmaegi epitomizes the escalating climate crisis gripping Southeast Asia. Warmer ocean temperatures are fueling stronger and more erratic tropical cyclones, amplifying their impact on densely populated coastal regions. The Philippines and Vietnam—two of the world’s most disaster-prone countries—face rising humanitarian and economic costs as extreme weather becomes the norm.
Experts emphasize the need for deeper regional cooperation—integrated early warning systems, joint relief operations, and shared climate adaptation strategies—to mitigate future disasters. Without systemic resilience-building, each storm will continue to erode hard-won development gains.
A Regional Call for Preparedness and Unity
Typhoon Kalmaegi’s deadly path from the Philippines to Vietnam stands as a grim reminder of the accelerating threat of climate-induced disasters in Southeast Asia. While improved preparedness has saved lives, the mounting frequency of such events demands more than reactive measures—it calls for structural resilience, sustainable urban planning, and regional solidarity.
As Kalmaegi barrels across the South China Sea, the region once again finds itself united by vulnerability. The test now lies not only in surviving the storm but in transforming these recurrent crises into a blueprint for collective resilience in a changing climate.
(With agency inputs)
