Distraught survivors surveyed their damaged homes on the eve of the traditional nine-day Christmas vigil that Filipinos observe with dawn masses and rice cakes.
Christmas is the most celebrated holiday in the Philippines, where 80 percent of its 100 million people are Catholic, and decorations such as colourful lights and lanterns have already been put up in most towns.
"It will be a very sad Christmas and a dark one because we have no power. But the important thing is everyone around me is still moving," 54-year-old rice farmer Noemi Pesigan told AFP.
Three people were killed in floods in Northern Samar province, which faces the Pacific, municipal disaster officer Jonathan Baldo told DZMM radio.
Flying debris also killed a man in Northern Samar, national disaster agency spokeswoman Mina Marasigan told AFP, without being able to confirm the other three fatalities.
In Bicol, a vast region in the east often hit by typhoons, authorities credited the early evacuation of 720,000 people for what they believed would be a low death toll.
"We have zero floods, zero deaths, zero casualties," Joey Salceda, governor of Albay province in Bicol, told ABS-CBN television.
But he said the entire province of 1.2 million people was without power.
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