Related: Slow Saturday Special: Typhoon in the Philippines
Also see:
Surging wall of water made escape difficult
Philippines reeling in wake of deadly storm
Local Filipino-Americans mourn, raise funds
"Amid devastation, desperation swells in Philippines; Filipinos plead for food, water; UN team, US aid begin arriving" by Todd Pitman and Jim Gomez | Associated Press, November 12, 2013
TACLOBAN, Philippines — Bodies lay uncollected and uncounted in the streets and thousands of desperate survivors pleaded for food, water, and medicine as rescue workers took on a daunting task Monday in the typhoon-battered islands of the Philippines.
The hard-hit city of Tacloban resembled a landfill from the air, with only a few concrete buildings standing in the wake of one of the most powerful storms to ever hit land, packing 147-miles-per-hour winds and whipping up 20-foot walls of sea water that tossed ships inland and swept many out to sea.
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Along with a contingent of Marines, the US military dispatched food, water, and generators to the city, the first outside help in what will swell into a major international relief mission. An American aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, is expected to arrive in about two days.
I'm always suspicious when U.S warships arrive in the aftermath of anything. I'm not going to go down the weather control controversy; it's just an observation because it happened in Haiti as a prelude to a possible staging area for invading Venezuela.
Authorities said at least 9.7 million people were affected by Typhoon Haiyan, which observers say was the deadliest natural disaster to beset this poor Southeast Asian nation.
That's odd because I was led to believe it wasn't going to be that bad in the earlier articles.
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Philippine soldiers were distributing food and water, and assessment teams from the United Nations and other international agencies were seen Monday for the first time.
Authorities said they had evacuated some 800,000 people ahead of the typhoon, but many evacuation centers proved to be no protection against the wind and rising water. The Philippine National Red Cross, responsible for warning the region and giving advice, said people were not prepared for a storm surge.
‘‘Imagine America, which was prepared and very rich, still had a lot of challenges at the time of Hurricane Katrina, but what we had was three times more than what they received,’’ said Gwendolyn Pang, the group’s executive director.
I would like to qualify the "we" in that statement, and much of the Katrina damage area has not been cleared or rebuilt.
The wind, rain, and coastal storm surges transformed neighborhoods into twisted piles of debris, blocking roads and trapping decomposing bodies underneath. Cars and trucks lay upended among flattened homes, and bridges and ports were washed away....
In Tacloban, residents stripped malls, shops, and homes of food, water, and consumer goods. Officials said some of the looting smacked of desperation but in other cases people hauled away TVs, refrigerators, Christmas trees, and even a treadmill.
Kennedy said Philippine forces were handling security well and US troops were ‘‘looking at how to open up roads and land planes and helicopters’’ in order to bring in shelter, water, and other supplies.
Still, those caught in the storm were worried that aid would not arrive soon enough.
‘‘We’re afraid that it’s going to get dangerous in town because relief goods are trickling in very slow,’’ said Bobbie Womack, an American missionary from Athens, Tenn. ‘‘I know it’s a massive, massive undertaking to try to feed a town of over 150,000 people. They need to bring in shiploads of food.’’
Womack’s husband, Larry, said he chose to stay at their beachside home in Tacloban, only to find the storm surge engulfing it. He survived by climbing onto a beam in the roof.
Marvin Daga, a 19-year-old student, tried to ride out the storm in his home with his ailing father, Mario, but the storm surge carried the building away.
They clung to each other while the house floated for a while, but it eventually crumbled and they fell into churning waters. The teen grabbed a coconut tree with one hand and his father with the other, but he slipped out of his grasp. He has not been able to find him.
That's horrifying.
The Philippine president, Benigno Aquino III, declared a ‘‘state of national calamity,’’ allowing the central government to release emergency funds quicker and impose price controls on staple goods.
He said the two worst-hit provinces, Leyte and Samar, had witnessed ‘‘massive destruction and loss of life’’ but that elsewhere casualties were low.
Haiyan hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippines on Friday and quickly barreled across its central islands, with winds that gusted to 170 miles per hour.
The Philippines, an archipelago nation of more than 7,000 islands, is annually buffeted by tropical storms and typhoons.
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This next article surprises me because I was told earlier that the Philippines were ready:
"Systemic problems hindered readiness in Philippines; Poverty, politics bedevil country" by Max Fisher | Washington Post, November 12, 2013
WASHINGTON — The typhoon that tore through the Philippines on Friday threw the country into such turmoil that, days later, public officials have been able to supply only rough estimates of the death toll, which could be more than 10,000.
By every indication, the Philippine government is doing all it can to respond. But the slow start on efforts to serve the hundreds of thousands of people displaced highlights just how badly the country was caught off guard by the storm’s destruction.
Why wasn’t the Philippines more ready? About 20 tropical cyclones hit the country every year, making them practically routine....
The single most important factor may be that, quite simply, this storm was just too big; but the Philippines seem to have been particularly ill-suited to deal with this crisis.
Maybe it is me, but why bash the Philippines in their hour of need?
One of the clearest explanations for the lack of preparedness may also be one of the most difficult to address: its poverty. The country is ranked 165th in the world by gross domestic product per capita, just below the Republic of Congo. One result is that many homes are modestly constructed of light materials such as wood.
Another explanation is that the government has fewer resources to invest in infrastructure that could resist natural disasters and be used for relief efforts....
Other developing countries, including China, often invest heavily in infrastructure, plowing money into such projects to spur economic growth.
The Philippines political system, though, can make centralized governance difficult. Owing to the country’s remarkable diversity — more than 100 languages are spoken, including eight recognized regional languages — local and provincial governments have a large degree of autonomy.
I find it so sad that the agenda-pushing paper has chosen this moment to push for more centralized government.
That helps with political stability, but it makes it tougher for the central government to push through infrastructure development or to organize a national response once disaster strikes. This may help explain why, as of Monday, the government had provided just three military transport planes to bring supplies in to Tacloban and to evacuate refugees, though the coastal city is the country’s hardest-hit.
The Philippine military is also struggling, in Tacloban and elsewhere, to simply establish order. Looting has gotten so bad that relief groups say their convoys have come under attack. It may be an extension of the country’s ongoing struggle with crime. The government was losing control of public order long before the storm hit.
In a radio interview earlier this year, Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II conceded, “I am, like everyone else, also alarmed that despite the measures taken by the Philippine National Police, including checkpoints and others, these criminals are trying to challenge the government.”
The fear that the government will not be able to provide relief supplies may be self-reinforcing, making criminals and noncriminals alike more likely to loot.
Those damn Filipinos behaving like a bunch of Wall Street banksters!
It may also help explain why a number of families in the worst-hit areas reportedly ignored the warnings and stayed in their homes. Reportedly, many feared that the state would be unable to protect their homes from looters.
Did Filipinos also have a fraudulent foreclosure crisis where banks seized homes?
Contrast the Philippines experience with typhoons to Japan’s with earthquakes.
For centuries, the country was nearly helpless against its regular quakes; more than 140,000 people were killed when one hit outside Tokyo in 1923.
Today, the country is engineered practically from the ground up to help withstand them. Large buildings are fortified with elaborate hydraulic systems; many homes are networked with alarms that sound in case of an offshore quake that could bring a tsunami. Civilians drill on the proper response.
When the massive 2011 quake and tsunami hit Japan, only 25 of the country’s 170 emergency response hospitals were knocked off line even temporarily. Because people felt they could count on the government, nearly all civilians complied with evacuation orders.
Yeah, Fukushima was a real success in storm surge management.
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"Once thriving, Philippine city now in shambles; Survivors stagger through long days with no supplies" by Keith Bradsher | New York Times, November 12, 2013
TACLOBAN, Philippines — Decomposing bodies still lie along the roads, like a corpse in a pink, short-sleeved shirt and blue shorts facedown in a black, muddy puddle 100 yards from the airport. Down the road is a church that was supposed to be an evacuation center but is littered with the bodies of those who drowned inside.
When a wind-whipped ocean rose Friday night, the ground floors of homes hundreds of yards inland were submerged within minutes, trapping such residents as Virginia Basinang, a 54-year-old retired teacher, who suddenly found herself struggling in waist-deep water on the second floor of her home. Screaming people bobbed in the water that surged through the streets, many grabbing for floating debris.
“Some of them were able to hold on, some were lucky and lived, but most did not,” she said, adding that 14 bodies were left on a wall across the street when the seawater receded a half-hour later. The bodies are still there, and the odor of their decay makes it impossible for Basinang and her family to eat meals at home.
Typhoon Haiyan, among the most powerful in history, slammed into the eastern Philippine city of Tacloban four days ago and cut a path of devastation barreling west across the archipelago nation. In its wake, corpses lay along roads lined with splintered homes and toppled power lines, as the living struggled to survive, increasingly desperate for fresh drinking water, food and shelter. The damage to everything was so great that it was hard even to tally. Mass graves began to fill as relief efforts struggled to get underway.
The roads of this once-thriving city of 220,000 were so clogged with debris from nearby buildings that they were barely discernible. The civilian airport terminal has shattered walls and gaping holes in the roof where steel beams protrude, twisted and torn by winds far more powerful than those of Hurricane Katrina when it made landfall near New Orleans in 2005.
One of the saddest and deadliest moments came when hundreds of people flocked to Tacloban’s domed sports arena at the urging of municipal officials, who believed its sturdy roof would withstand the wind. The roof did, but the arena flooded, and many inside drowned or were trampled in a frenzied rush to higher seats.
The top civil defense official of the Philippines said in an interview after inspecting the damage that the storm surge had been the highest in the country’s modern history....
As a violet sunset melted on Monday into the nearly total darkness of a city without electricity, lighted only by a waxing half moon, dispirited residents walked home after another day of waiting at the airport in hope of fresh water, food or a flight out.
Looters sacked groceries and pharmacies across the city over the weekend, leaving bare shelves for a population now quickly growing hungry and thirsty.
Miriam Refugio, 60, waited in the crowd of Filipinos at the airport seeking a scarce place on a flight to Manila. “Our home was destroyed, there is no food in this town, so we have to flee,” she said, standing with her granddaughter.
"her teenage granddaughter who held their only drinking water, a nearly empty plastic bottle.
They were trying to decide whether to drink water from a nearby pump, even though the granddaughter, tugging at her stomach for emphasis, said they were certain to become sick if they did.
Eduardo del Rosario, the executive director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, in an interview after inspecting the damage here, said the government was still sending out helicopters Monday to look for communities that had not been heard from since the typhoon....
But one of the biggest questions here involves the many people who seem to have disappeared, possibly sucked out to sea when the ocean returned to its usual level....
Compounding the damage was the extraordinary force of the wind. Palm trees are naturally resilient, flexing and bending in high winds. But entire groves were flattened."
That was what my print version gave me, but there is much, much more to the story.
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There was a rare piece of good news in there.
Also see:
Malden man joins effort in Philippines
Help needed in Philippines
What is interesting by its omission is what happened when the storm moved on to Vietnam and the South Asian inland. Globe stuck in the Philippines.
This next item is even more distasteful, disgraceful, and shameless:
"UN climate talks turn to Typhoon Haiyan; Filipino delegate breaks into tears about victims" by Monika Scislowska | Associated Press, November 12, 2013
WARSAW — The devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan cast a gloom over UN climate talks Monday as the envoy from the Philippines broke down in tears and announced he would fast until a ‘‘meaningful outcome is in sight.’’
Naderev ‘‘Yeb’’ Sano’s emotional appeal was met with a standing ovation at the start of two-week talks in Warsaw, where more than 190 countries will try to lay the groundwork for a new pact to fight global warming.
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres also made reference to the impact of the typhoon in her opening speech and urged delegates to ‘‘go that extra mile’’ in their negotiations.
Scientists said that single weather events cannot conclusively be linked to global warming. Also, the link between man-made warming and hurricane activity is unclear, though rising sea levels are expected to make low-lying nations more vulnerable to storm surges.
Good things sea levels are not rising.
Nevertheless, extreme weather such as hurricanes often prompt calls for urgency at the UN talks.
Nevertheless is a terrible yet revealing word. It means forget about the facts, just take a deep whiff of the propaganda.
Last year, Hurricane Sandy’s assault on the US East Coast and Typhoon Bopha’s impact on the Philippines were mentioned as examples of disasters the world could see more of unless it reins in the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet.
That is such a LIE!
See: Fart-Misting Fudge-Packers
The gases have soared but the planet has cooled?
Another way to help (if they are serious) would be to get John Kerry to ground the damn airplane for a while.
‘‘We can fix this. We can stop this madness. Right now, right here,’’ Sano told delegates in Warsaw.
Choking on his words, he said he was waiting in agony for news from relatives caught in the massive storm’s path, though he was relieved to hear his brother had survived....
‘‘In solidarity with my countrymen who are struggling to find food back home . . . I will now commence a voluntary fasting for the climate,’’ he added.
‘‘This means I will voluntarily refrain from eating food during this [conference] until a meaningful outcome is in sight.’’
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Though no major decisions are expected on the sidelines of the conference in Warsaw’s National Stadium, the level of progress could be an indicator of the world’s chances of reaching a deal in 2015. That’s the new watershed year in the UN-led process after a 2009 summit in Copenhagen ended in discord.
Where delegates froze their fart-misting asses off if memory doesn't fail me.
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