The first typhoon to lash the Philippines this year killed at least nine people and left 11 others missing Wednesday after flooding streets in the capital and toppling power lines. Typhoon Conson slammed into northeast Quezon province with winds of 75 miles (120 kilometers) per hour late Tuesday and weakened into a tropical storm as it crossed rice-growing Luzon Island and buffeted the sprawling capital with strong gusts and heavy rain for about two hours, said weather forecaster Bernie de Leon. The storm blew out of Manila before dawn Wednesday, leaving downed branches, trees and scattered trash. Winds ripped tarpaulin billboards along the main roads and blew away roofs of coastal shanties. Workers rushed to fix damaged power lines that left more than half of the main northern island without electricity. The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines said it would take two to three days to normalize the situation, with Manila getting only half its needs and hotels and malls running their own generators. Conson moved into the South China Sea and was projected to make another landfall on the Chinese mainland west of Macau later this week, the Associated Press reported.
