A powerful typhoon wrecked houses, caused towering tidal surges and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee to emergency shelters as it cut across the northern Philippines on Sunday in the sixth major storm to hit the country in less than a month.

A super typhoon ripped through Philippines’ largest island on Sunday, knocking down houses and sending more than half a million people to emergency shelters, as rare back-to-back storms cause havoc across an exhausted nation.