Typhoon Preparedness Checklist Cebu Manila Philippines

Roughly twenty typhoons enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility each year. If you arrived after your last typhoon, this is your sign to prepare — before PAGASA names the next storm.

Know your terms

• TCWS 1–2 (Tropical Cyclone Wind Signals): winds of 39–88 km/h. Light damage; stay aware.
• TCWS 3–4: 89–184 km/h. Significant structural damage possible; this is when you should already be home.
• TCWS 5: the rare maximum (e.g., Super Typhoon Odette, which wrecked Cebu and Bohol in December 2021). Assume weeks of outages.
• Signal vs rainfall: wind signals describe wind, not flood risk. Monitor rainfall warnings — Red rainfall means serious flooding regardless of wind signal.

The 72-hour kit (per person)

• Water: 3 liters per person per day, three days minimum. Plus water for cooking.
• Food: ready-to-eat items that survive without cooking — canned tuna and sardines, crackers, chocolate, instant noodles (but remember you may lack hot water).
• Flashlight + headlamp with spare batteries. One headlamp per person beats one flashlight per household.
• Power bank: a 20,000 mAh unit minimum per adult. After Odette, Cebu residents went 2–6 weeks without grid power; charge everything when a signal is raised.
• Cash in small bills: ₱2,000–5,000. Card machines and GCash are useless without power or signal.
• Medications for a full week, plus copies of prescriptions.
• First aid kit, mosquito repellent, alcohol/sanitizer.
• Documents: passport, ACR I-Card, insurance policy, property lease — sealed in a ziplock. Photos of everything on your phone AND in cloud storage.
• Power strips: when one neighbor gets a generator, you want to be the useful person.

Home prep

1. Charge all phones, power banks, laptops, and rechargeable fans the moment TCWS 1 is announced.
2. Fill bathtubs, buckets and every pot with water — interruptions hit within hours of landfall.
3. Buy ice blocks; they keep the fridge cold for a day and you can drink the melt.
4. Tape or board large windows if you're in an older building; move balcony furniture inside (projectiles cause most window damage).
5. If your ground-floor unit has flood history (Marikina, parts of Cebu City's lower barangays), prepare to move electronics upstairs.
6. Cooking: a small butane stove and two spare canisters. This is the most underrated comfort item in a blackout.

Communication plan

• Download before the storm: PAGASA's app/site, NDRRMC updates, and your barangay's Facebook page (yes, Facebook is the real emergency broadcast system here).
• Agree on a check-in protocol with family abroad — SMS often works when calls and data fail.
• Save these numbers offline: 911 (national emergency), your hospital, your building's admin, your barangay hall.

During the typhoon

• Stay away from windows; interior bathrooms are the safest rooms in condo units.
• Do not go outside during the eye's calm — the back wall is coming.
• Elevators go first in blackouts; if you live above floor 15 in a building with pump-dependent water, expect water pressure loss too.
• Unplug appliances; surges when power returns kill more devices than the storm does.

After: the part nobody plans

Flooding keeps roads closed for days. Water and ice sell out instantly. Internet restoration takes longest of all utilities — a spare load-based SIM from a different network than your main one is cheap insurance. Check on neighbors, especially elderly ones; barangay coordination works person-to-person here.

Do this checklist once and refresh it every June. The Philippines is wonderful nine typhoon-free months a year — preparedness is what buys you the other three.