"Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons are the same thing. They are just called different names in different parts of the world."
Hey, what's in a name?
"Intense typhoon strikes Philippines" by Jim Gomez | Associated Press, November 08, 2013
MANILA — One of the most powerful typhoons ever recorded slammed into the Philippines early Friday, and one weather expert warned, ‘‘There will be catastrophic damage.’’
The US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said shortly before Typhoon Haiyan’s landfall that the storm’s maximum sustained winds were 195 miles per hour, with gusts up to 235 miles per hour.
‘‘There aren’t too many buildings constructed that can withstand that kind of wind,’’ said Jeff Masters, a former hurricane meteorologist who is meteorology director at the private firm Weather Underground.
Masters said the storm had been poised to be the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded at landfall. He warned of catastrophic damage.
Local authorities reported having troubles reaching colleagues in the landfall area.
The local weather bureau had a lower reading on the storm’s power, saying its speed at landfall in Eastern Samar province’s Guiuan township had sustained winds at 147 per hour, with gusts of 170 miles per hour.
Authorities in Guiuan could not immediately be reached for word of any deaths or damage, regional civil defense chief Rey Gozon told DZBB radio. Forecaster Mario Palafox of the national weather bureau said the organization had lost contact with its staff in the landfall area.
The storm was not expected to directly hit the flood-prone capital, Manila, further north.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said more than 125,000 people had been evacuated from towns and villages in the typhoon’s path.
Typhoon Haiyan’s wind strength at landfall had been expected to beat out Hurricane Camille, which had winds of 195 miles per hour at landfall in the United States 1969, Masters said.
The only bright side is that Haiyan is a fast-moving storm, so flooding from heavy rain — which usually causes the most deaths from typhoons in the Philippines — may not be as bad, Masters said.
‘‘The wind damage should be the most extreme in Philippines history,’’ he said.
The storm later will be a threat to both Vietnam and Laos and is likely to be among the top five natural disasters for those countries, Masters said. The storm is forecast to barrel through the Philippines’ central region Friday and Saturday before blowing toward the South China Sea over the weekend, heading toward Vietnam.
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"Typhoon kills over 100 in Philippines; Powerful storm is now headed toward Vietnam" by Oliver Teves and Teresa Cerojano | Associated Press, November 09, 2013
MANILA, Philippines — One of the strongest storms on record has killed more than 100 people and injured another 100 in the central Philippines before sweeping west toward Vietnam on Saturday, still packing destructive winds capable of blowing away houses and uprooting trees.
Captain John Andrews, deputy director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, said he had received ‘‘reliable information’’ from his staff describing the death and destruction Typhoon Haiyan caused in Tacloban city on Leyte Island, about 360 miles southwest of Manila, where the storm made landfall Friday.
He said that more than 100 bodies were lying in the streets and another 100 people were injured.
He said messages from civil aviation authorities in Tacloban to the capital, Manila, had to be relayed through another airport in the central Philippines once every five hours to conserve radio batteries.
The Philippine television station GMA reported its news team saw 11 bodies, including that of a child, washed ashore Friday and 20 more bodies at a pier in Tacloban hours after the typhoon ripped through the coastal city.
At least 20 more bodies were taken to a church in nearby Palo town that was used as an evacuation center but had to be abandoned when its roofs were blown away, the television network reported.
Television images showed howling winds peeling off tin roof sheets during heavy rain.
Ferocious winds felled large branches and snapped coconut trees.
A man was shown carrying the body of his 6-year-old daughter who drowned, and another image showed vehicles piled up in debris.
Nearly 800,000 people were forced to flee their homes and damage was believed to be extensive.
Weather officials said Haiyan had sustained winds of 147 miles per hour with gusts of 170 miles per hour when it made landfall. By those measurements, Haiyan would be comparable to a strong Category 4 hurricane in the United States.
Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons are the same thing. They are just called different names in different parts of the world.
The typhoon’s sustained winds weakened Saturday to 109 miles per hour with gusts of up to 131 miles per hour as it blew farther away from the Philippines toward Vietnam.
In Vietnam, state media reported that several central provinces began evacuating some 300,000 people from high risk areas.
The typhoon was expected to make landfall in the central region early Sunday morning.
Because of cut-off communications in the Philippines, it was impossible to know the full extent of casualties and damage.
Officially, four people were listed as dead as of Saturday morning, before the latest information from Tacloban came in.
Southern Leyte Governor Roger Mercado said the typhoon ripped roofs off houses and triggered landslides that blocked roads.
The dense clouds and heavy rains made the day seem almost as dark as night, he said.
‘‘When you’re faced with such a scenario, you can only pray, and pray and pray,’’ Mercado said by telephone.
Mercado added that mayors in the province had not called in to him to report any major damage.
‘‘I hope that means they were spared and not the other way around,’’ he said. ‘‘My worst fear is there will be massive loss of lives and property.’’
Eduardo del Rosario, head of the disaster response agency, said the speed at which the typhoon sliced through the central islands — 25 miles per hour — helped prevent its 375-mile band of rain clouds from dumping enough of their load to overflow waterways.
Flooding from heavy rains is often the main cause of deaths from typhoons.
‘‘It has helped that the typhoon blew very fast in terms of preventing lots of casualties,’’ regional military commander Lieutenant General Roy Deveraturda said.
He said that the massive evacuation of villagers before the storm also saved many lives.
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Related:
"President Benigno Aquino III assured the public of warlike preparations, with three C-130 air force cargo planes and 32 military helicopters and planes on standby, along with 20 navy ships. Among the evacuees were thousands of residents of Bohol who had been camped in tents and other makeshift shelters since a magnitude-7.2 earthquake hit the island province last month. Relief workers said they were struggling to find ways to deliver food and other supplies, with roads blocked by landslides and fallen trees.....
The death toll from a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that struck the central Philippine island of Bohol on Tuesday rose to 93, as rescuers struggled to reach patients in a collapsed hospital. Centuries-old stone churches crumbled and wide areas were without power. As night fell, the entire province was in the dark after the quake cut power supplies. Windy weather and rain also forced back a military rescue helicopter....
The earthquake that struck the central Philippines and killed at least 144 people also dealt a serious blow to the region’s historical and religious legacy by heavily damaging a dozen or more churches, some of them hundreds of years old. As rescuers reached some of the hardest-hit areas Wednesday and the death toll from the quake a day earlier continued to rise, images of wrecked religious buildings resonated across a nation where 80 percent of the population is Roman Catholic. Tuesday was a national holiday in the Philippines celebrating the Muslim feast of Eid ul Adha, which meant some of the most damaged structures, like schools and office buildings, were empty when the quake struck, which saved many lives."
Thank God for that.
"Many feared dead after typhoon slams Philippines" by Jim Gomez | Associated Press, November 09, 2013
TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) — The central Philippine city of Tacloban was in ruins Saturday, a day after being ravaged by one of the strongest typhoons on record, as horrified residents spoke of storm surges as high as trees and authorities said they were expecting a ‘‘very high number of fatalities.’’
At least 138 people were confirmed dead in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, which slammed into six central Philippine islands on Friday, wiping away buildings and leveling seaside homes. At least 118 of the deaths were on hardest-hit Leyte Island, where Tacloban is located, said national disaster agency spokesman Maj. Reynaldo Balido.
But after arriving in Tacloban on Saturday, Interior Secretary Max Roxas said it was too early to know how many people had died in the storm, which was heading toward Vietnam after moving away from the Philippines.
‘‘The rescue operation is ongoing, we expect a very high number of fatalities as well as injured,’’ he said. ‘‘All systems, all vestiges of modern living — communications, power, water — all are down. Media is down, so there is no way to communicate with the people in a mass sort of way.’’
The Philippine Red Cross and its partners were preparing for a major relief effort ‘‘because of the magnitude of the disaster,’’ said the agency’s chairman, Richard Gordon.
The airport in Tacloban, a city of 200,000 located about 360 miles southeast of Manila, looked like a muddy wasteland of debris Saturday, with crumpled tin roofs and upturned cars. The airport tower’s glass windows were shattered, and air force helicopters were busy flying in and out at the start of relief operations.
‘‘The devastation is, I don’t have the words for it,’’ Roxas said. ‘‘It’s really horrific. It’s a great human tragedy.’’
U.S. Marine Col. Mike Wylie surveyed the damage in Tacloban prior to possible American assistance. ‘‘The storm surge came in fairly high and there is significant structural damage and trees blown over,’’ said Wylie, who is a member of the U.S.-Philippines Military Assistance Group based in Manila.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that America ‘‘stands ready to help.’’
Weather officials said Haiyan had sustained winds of 147 miles per hour with gusts of 170 mph when it made landfall. By those measurements, Haiyan would be comparable to a strong Category 4 hurricane in the U.S., and nearly in the top category, a 5.
Hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons are the same, but have different names in different parts of the world.
One Tacloban resident said he and others took refuge inside a parked Jeep to protect themselves from the storm, but the vehicle was swept away by a surging wall of water.
‘‘The water was as high as a coconut tree,’’ said 44-year-old Sandy Torotoro, a bicycle taxi driver who lives near the airport with his wife and 8-year-old daughter. ‘‘I got out of the jeep and I was swept away by the rampaging water with logs, trees and our house, which was ripped off from its mooring.’’
‘‘When we were being swept by the water, many people were floating and raising their hands and yelling for help. But what can we do? We also needed to be helped,’’ Torotoro said.
Vice Mayor Jim Pe of Coron town on Busuanga, the last island battered by the typhoon before it blew away to the South China Sea, said most of the houses and buildings there had been destroyed or damaged. Five people drowned in the storm surge and three others are missing, he said by phone.
‘‘It was like a 747 flying just above my roof,’’ he said, describing the sound of the winds. He said his family and some of his neighbors whose houses were destroyed took shelter in his basement.
Philippine broadcaster ABS-CBN showed fierce winds whipping buildings and vehicles as storm surges swamped Tacloban with debris-laden floodwaters.
In the aftermath, people were seen weeping while retrieving bodies of loved ones inside buildings and on a street that was littered with fallen trees, roofing material and other building parts torn off in the typhoon’s fury. All that was left of one large building whose walls were smashed in were the skeletal remains of its rafters.
ABS-CBN television anchor Ted Failon, who was able to report only briefly Friday from Tacloban, said the storm surge was ‘‘like the tsunami in Japan.’’
At least a nuclear plant didn't melt down in the Philippines.
‘‘The sea engulfed Tacloban,’’ he said, explaining that a major part of the city is surrounded on three sides by the waters between Leyte and Samar islands.
Before he left Tacloban on Saturday, Failon said he saw people like a ‘‘pack of rats’’ looting a department store taking whatever they could lay their hands on including refrigerators and TV sets. TV footage showed a group of men smiling as they walked away with a large ice cream freezer and other goods.
The Philippine television station GMA reported that its news team saw 11 bodies, including that of a child, washed ashore Friday and 20 more bodies at a pier in Tacloban hours after the typhoon ripped through the coastal city.
At least 20 more bodies were taken to a church in nearby Palo town that was used as an evacuation center but had to be abandoned when its roofs were blown away, the TV network reported. TV images showed howling winds peeling off tin roof sheets during heavy rain.
Ferocious winds felled large branches and snapped coconut trees. A man was shown carrying the body of his 6-year-old daughter who drowned, and another image showed vehicles piled up in debris.
Nearly 800,000 people were forced to flee their homes and damage was believed to be extensive. About 4 million people were affected by the typhoon, the national disaster agency said.
Relief workers said they were struggling to find ways to deliver food and other supplies, with roads blocked by landslides and fallen trees.
The typhoon’s sustained winds weakened Saturday to 101 mph with stronger gusts as it blew farther away from the Philippines toward Vietnam.
Vietnamese authorities in four central provinces began evacuating more than 500,000 people from high risk areas to government buildings, schools and other concrete homes able to withstand strong winds.
‘‘The evacuation is being conducted with urgency,’’ disaster official Nguyen Thi Yen Linh said from central Danang City, where some 76,000 were being moved to safety.
Hundreds of thousands of others were being taken to shelters in the provinces of Quang Ngai, Quang Nam and Thua Thien Hue. Schools were closed and two deputy prime ministers were sent to the region to direct the preparations.
The typhoon was forecast to make landfall in Vietnam at around 10 a.m. Sunday between Danang and Quang Ngai and move northwest.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE: Typhoon toll could reach 10,000 in Philippines
First thing I noticed was the different byline than that in my printed piece of $hit.
Between the two I found what I wanted while wasting valuable time. WTF?
"The powerful typhoon that swept across the Philippines on Friday, one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall, cut a path of destruction through several central islands, leaving the seaside city of Tacloban in ruins and leading to early, unconfirmed estimates of as many as 10,000 dead.... Tacloban is near the Red Beach on Leyte Island where US General Douglas MacArthur waded ashore on Oct. 20, 1944, fulfilling his famous pledge, ‘‘I shall return,’’ made in March 1942 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered him to relocate to Australia as Japanese forces pushed back US and Filipino defenders. Tacloban was the first city to be liberated by US and Filipino forces.... “The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami,” Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, the head of the team, said in a statement, referring to the 2004 tsunami that devastated parts of Indonesia and other countries. “This is destruction on a massive scale.”
This after I was told in one of those linked articles above that it shouldn't be that bad. I'm sorry I'm not devoting more time and attention to this and so many other things; however, I've just had it with AmeriKa's $hit journali$m. Sorry.
Also see: Fires and Floods in the Philippines
The typhoon sort of makes the graft and corruption pale by comparison, although I'm not surprised the peace deal collapsed.
55 killed as violence escalates in Philippine city
Philippine army moves to retake territory held by rebels
Philippine troops push back against rebels
Woman, 5 rebels killed in fighting
Deadly rebel hostage standoff in Philippines ends
I'm sorry, folks, for not giving those articles I read its due analysis and coverage here; however, I simply see Islamic insurgencies = covert western intelligence operations now no matter where they be.
