The Phillippines Natural Disaster Topic

[duke007]

Police chiefs in Leyte reckon there could be 10,000 deaths

[Ernesto]

My carefully planned and prepared visit (including a three days 5-some) to Tacloban January 7 -10th

has been blown away by the typhoon and washed away by the flood.

Have not yet got any information if my friends there have survived and how they are.
I have not heard of any damages in Angeles so far.

Does anybody know the situation in Cebu ?  

[dazedandconfused]

Hi Ernesto.

 

The typhoon by-passed Angeles so all normal (if that's possible) there.

 

Cebu City had some structural damage but the main path of the typhoon was further North on the island which was hit badly. Broadly though the City is fine.

 

Tacloban is a disaster zone and it's a tragic mess.   Hope your friends are ok, it's almost impossible to get any accurate information about that area right now and communication is a big problem.  You might have to sit tight for a few days before you can track them down.

 

Another typhoon heading in later this week as well, though not quite on the same scale as last Fridays.....

[pdogg]

New York Times article:

 

 

November 10, 2013

Vast Challenges for Philippines After Typhoon By KEITH BRADSHER

CEBU, Philippines — Three days after one of the most powerful storms ever to buffet the Philippines, the scale of the devastation and the desperation of the survivors were slowly coming into view.

 

The living told stories of the dead or dying — the people swept away in a torrent of seawater, the corpses strewn among the wreckage. Photos from the hard-hit city of Tacloban showed vast stretches of land swept clean of homes, and reports emerged of people who were desperate for food and water raiding aid convoys and stripping the stores that were left standing.

 

As Monday dawned, it became increasingly clear that Typhoon Haiyan had ravaged cities, towns and fishing villages when it played a deadly form of hopscotch across the islands of the central Philippines on Friday. By some estimates, at least 10,000 people may have died in Tacloban alone, and with phone service out across stretches of the far-flung archipelago, it was difficult to know if the storm was as deadly in more remote areas.

 

Barreling across palm-fringed beaches and plowing into frail homes with a force that by some estimates approached that of a tornado, Haiyan delivered a crippling blow to this country’s midsection. The culprit increasingly appeared to be a storm surge that was driven by those winds, which were believed to be among the strongest ever recorded in the Philippines, lifting a wall of water onto the land as they struck. By some accounts, the winds reached 190 miles an hour.

 

As aid crews struggled to reach ravaged areas, the storm appeared to lay bare some of the perennial woes of the Philippines. The country’s roads and airports, long starved of money by corrupt and incompetent governments, are some of the worst in Southeast Asia and often make traveling long distances a trial. On Monday, clogged with debris from splintered buildings and shattered trees, the roads in the storm’s path were worse, slowing rescue teams.

 

Richard Gordon, the chairman of the Philippines Red Cross, said that a Red Cross aid convoy to Tacloban had to turn back on Sunday after it stopped at a collapsed bridge and was nearly hijacked by a crowd of hungry people. “There is very little food going in, and what food there was, was captured” by the crowd, Mr. Gordon said in a telephone interview on Monday morning.

 

The storm posed new challenges for President Benigno S. Aquino III, who just two months ago struggled to wrest back a major city in the south from insurgents. Mr. Aquino has won plaudits at home and abroad for his fight against corruption during his three and a half years in office, leading to increased foreign investment and an impressive growth rate. But he must still contend with Muslim separatists in the south and with provinces that have long been the domains of regional strongmen, resistant to government control.

 

Now add to that list a storm that looks to be one of the country’s worst disasters, at a time when emergency funds have been depleted by a series of other calamities, most notably an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 that struck the middle of the country four weeks ago. On Monday, after the reports of widespread raiding of stores and robberies and rising fears of a breakdown of law and order, the government said it was flying more police officers to the region.

 

Although deadly storms are not unusual in the Philippines, Typhoon Haiyan appears to stand apart, both in the ferocity of its winds, which some described as sounding like a freight train, and in its type of destruction. Most deaths from typhoons in the Philippines are caused by mudslides and rivers flooding from heavy rains.

 

So when Haiyan sped across the islands on Friday, some officials and weather experts in the Philippines thought they had witnessed something of a miracle. The storm that lit up social media for days with dire warnings was thought to have mostly spared the islands because it did not linger long enough to dump a deluge of rain.

 

What they did not factor into their hopeful assessments was a storm surge that some reports said reached 13 feet in Tacloban, and which left a trail of destruction that in some ways mirrored the aftermath of tsunamis. One photo of a merchant ship left stranded on land resembled images from Japan in 2011, when an earthquake flung a wall of water onto its northeastern shore.

 

While it was unclear if the power of the storm was tied to climate change, the surge may serve as another reminder to low-lying cities of the need to prepare for the worst.

 

President Aquino had urged residents to leave low-lying areas, but he did not order an evacuation. On Sunday, he toured some stricken areas and declared a “state of calamity,” a first step in the release of emergency money from the government.

 

As the president arrived in Tacloban to meet with victims of the storm and to coordinate rescue and cleanup efforts, his defense secretary, Voltaire Gazmin, described the chaos in the city of 220,000.

 

“There is no power, no water, nothing,” Mr. Gazmin said. “People are desperate.”

 

Lynette Lim, a spokeswoman for Save the Children, weathered the storm in a local government office in Tacloban before leaving the city on a military aircraft Sunday morning. She said that even schools, gymnasiums and other sites that the local government had designated as evacuation centers had failed to hold up against the powerful winds.

 

“The roofs had been ripped off, the windows had shattered, and sometimes the ceilings had caved in,” Ms. Lim said in a telephone interview from Manila.

Poor neighborhoods fared especially badly, with virtually no structures left standing except for a few government buildings. With no police officers in sight on Sunday morning, Ms. Lim said, people had begun grabbing food and other items off pharmacy and grocery store shelves.

Video from Tacloban on ABS-CBN television showed scores of people entering stores and stuffing suitcases and bags with clothing and housewares. One photo showed a man holding a gun protecting his store.

 

News reports from Tacloban told of how officials were unable to get an accurate death count because law enforcement and government personnel could not be found after the storm. Tacloban’s mayor, Alfred S. Romualdez, was reported to have been “holding on to his roof” before being rescued, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

 

By Monday, the weakened typhoon had made landfall in Vietnam, according to the Hong Kong Observatory, but it was too early to assess the damage.

International aid agencies and foreign governments sent emergency teams to the Philippines. At the request of the Philippine government, the United States defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, ordered the deployment of ships and aircraft to deliver supplies and help in the search-and-rescue efforts, the Defense Department said. The United States Embassy in Manila made $100,000 immediately available for health and sanitation efforts, according to its Twitter feed.

 

President Obama issued a statement on Sunday that said he expected “the incredible resiliency of the Philippine people” to help the country, an American ally, through the trauma. He said the United States also stood ready to assist the government’s relief and recovery efforts.

On Sunday, about 90 American Marines and sailors based in Okinawa, Japan, landed in the Philippines as part of an advance team assessing the disaster to determine what the Pentagon might need to help in relief efforts.

 

According to Colonel Brad Bartlet, a Marine spokesman, the team has made requests for C-130 cargo airplanes, MV-22 Osprey helicopters and other aircraft to participate in search and recovery at sea. The Navy has also sent two P-3 Orion surveillance planes, which are often used during natural disasters to patrol the seas in search of survivors stranded in ships and boats.

 

Mar Roxas, the Philippine interior minister, said that while relief supplies were beginning to reach the Tacloban airport, they could go no farther because debris was blocking the roads in the area.

 

“The entire airport was under water up to roof level,” Mr. Roxas said, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Speaking to reporters in Tacloban, he added, “The devastation here is absolute.”

 

Robert S. Zeigler, the director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, Philippines, said he was concerned that the damage reports seemed to be mainly from Tacloban, where aid has so far been concentrated, and not from the many fishing communities that line the coast.

“The coastal areas can be quite vulnerable — in many cases, you have fishing communities right up to the shoreline, and they can be wiped out” by a powerful storm surge, he said. “The disturbing reports are the lack of reports, and the areas that are cut off could be quite severely hit.”

 

Across Cebu province, 43 people were killed, 111 were injured and five are missing, said Wilson Ramos, the deputy disaster management officer for Cebu. The authorities were trying to conduct aerial surveys of the area directly hit by the storm’s center, particularly the town of Daanbantayan  and Bantayan Island, Mr. Ramos said. 

 

“We are very tired already,” he said in the province’s disaster offices. “But we hope to send relief to those affected.”

Residents of Cebu, one of the country’s largest cities, said many roads to the north of Cebu Island were still closed after towns there suffered heavy damage, although the city was spared the brunt of the storm.

 

“It was very loud, like a train,” said Ranulfo L. Manatad, a night watchman at a street market in Mandaue City, on the northern outskirts of Cebu.

In Mabolo, another town on the northern flank of Cebu, the winds toppled a locally famous tree with a trunk roughly a yard in diameter. The tree had withstood every typhoon for more than a century.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/world/asia/philippines-typhoon.html

[Stealth007]

Yolanda' kills estimated 10,000

 

By Manuel Mogato and Roli Ng, Reuters

Posted at 11/11/2013 10:38 AM | Updated as of 11/11/2013 10:38 AM

 

TACLOBAN, Philippines - Rescue workers struggled to reach ravaged towns and villages in the central Philippines on Monday as they tried to deliver aid to survivors of a powerful typhoon that killed an estimated 10,000 people and displaced more than 600,000.

The United Nations said some survivors had no food, water or medicine. Relief operations were hampered because roads, airports and bridges had been destroyed or were covered in wreckage, it said.

President Benigno Aquino, facing one of the biggest challenges of his three-year rule, deployed soldiers to the devastated city of Tacloban to quell looting and said he might impose martial law or a state of emergency to ensure security.

Super typhoon Haiyan destroyed about 70 to 80 percent of structures in its path as it tore through Leyte province on Friday, said police chief superintendent Elmer Soria. After weakening, the storm headed west towards Vietnam.

Huge waves from one of the strongest storms ever recorded swept away coastal villages. Some officials likened the destruction to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

"From a helicopter, you can see the extent of devastation. From the shore and moving a kilometer inland, there are no structures standing. It was like a tsunami," said Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas, who was in Tacloban, Leyte's capital, before the typhoon struck.

 

"I don't know how to describe what I saw. It's horrific."

 

The Philippines government and disaster agency have not confirmed the latest estimate of the number of deaths from the storm, whose sustained winds reached 195 miles per hour (313 km per hour) with gusts of up to 235 mph (378 kph).

Soria, quoting local officials, said the estimated death toll so far was 10,000. That could climb once rescuers reach remote villages along the coast.

Nearly 620,000 people were displaced and 9.5 million "affected" across nine regions, the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement. Local officials observed one mass grave of between 300 to 500 bodies in one area of Tacloban alone, it added.

About 300 people died in neighboring Samar province, said an official of the provincial disaster agency.

Across Tacloban, men, women and children walked carefully over splintered remains of wooden houses, searching for missing loved ones and belongings. Not one building seems to have escaped damage in the coastal city of 220,000 people, about 580 km (360 miles) southeast of Manila.

Witnesses and officials described chaotic scenes. The city and nearby villages were flooded, leaving floating bodies and roads choked with debris from fallen trees, tangled power lines and flattened homes.

Survivors queued in lines, waiting for handouts of rice and water. Some sat and stared, covering their faces with rags to keep out the smell of the dead from one of the worst disasters to hit the typhoon-prone Southeast Asian nation.

One woman, eight months pregnant, described through tears how her 11 family members had vanished, including two daughters. "I can't think right now," she said. "I am overwhelmed."

 

U.S. MARINES ON WAY

 

About 90 U.S. Marines and sailors headed to the Philippines in a first wave of promised military assistance for relief efforts, U.S. officials said. President Barack Obama said the United States was ready to provide additional aid.

U.S. aid groups also launched a multimillion-dollar relief campaign. One group, World Vision, said a shipment of blankets and plastic tarpaulins would arrive from Germany on Monday as a first step in its plan to help 400,000 people.

An official of World Vision based in Cebu Province said there were early reports that as much as 90 percent of northern Cebu had been destroyed.

An aid team from Oxfam reported "utter destruction" in the northern-most tip of Cebu, the charity said.

The United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, said it was rushing emergency supplies to the Philippines.

"Reaching the worst affected areas is very difficult, with limited access due to the damage caused by the typhoon to infrastructure and communications," UNICEF Philippines Representative Tomoo Hozumi said in a statement.

Most of the storm deaths appeared to have been caused by surging sea water strewn with debris that many said resembled a tsunami. Tacloban lies in a cove where the seawater narrows, making it susceptible to storm surges.

 

AQUINO SENDS IN TROOPS

 

Aquino said the government had deployed 300 soldiers and police to restore order in Tacloban.

Looters rampaged through several stores in the city, witnesses said. A TV station said ATM machines were broken open.

Mobs attacked trucks loaded with food, tents and water on Tanauan bridge in Leyte, said Philippines Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon.

"Tonight, a column of armored vehicles will be arriving in Tacloban to show the government's resolve and to stop this looting," Aquino said on Sunday.

Aquino has shown exasperation at conflicting reports on damage and deaths. One TV network quoted him as telling the head of the disaster agency that he was running out of patience.

"How can you beat that typhoon?" said defense chief Voltaire Gazmin, when asked whether the government had been ill-prepared.

"It's the strongest on Earth. We've done everything we can, we had lots of preparation. It's a lesson for us."

The U.N.'s OCHA said aerial surveys showed significant damage to coastal areas with heavy ships thrown ashore, houses destroyed and vast tracts of agricultural land "decimated".

The destruction extended well beyond Tacloban.

Officials had yet to make contact with Guiuan, a town of 40,000 people that was first hit. Baco, a city of 35,000 in Oriental Mindoro province, was 80 percent under water, the U.N. said.

There were reports of damage across much of the Visayas, a region of eight major islands, including Leyte, Cebu and Samar.

Many tourists were stranded. "Seawater reached the second floor of the hotel," said Nancy Chang, who was on a business trip from China in Tacloban City and walked three hours through mud and debris for a military-led evacuation at the airport.

 

"It's like the end of the world."

 

Six people were killed and dozens wounded during heavy winds and storms in central Vietnam as Haiyan approached the coast, state media reported, even though it had weakened substantially since hitting the Philippines.

Vietnam authorities have moved 883,000 people in 11 central provinces to safe zones, according to the government's website.

[Stealth007]

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[Stealth007]

@Ernesto

 

My Thoughts and Prayers go out to you and your friends and all the other forum members that have friends and love once that got hit by this typhoon in hope that they all are oke , it`s a real mess out there......

 

 

Greetz , Stealth

[duke007]

Another typhoon heading in later this week as well, though not quite on the same scale as last Fridays.....

 

Hmmm, I fly out to Manila tomorrow for 6 nights, am I likely to be affected mate?

[Stealth007]

@Duke007

 

In that case i will keep a eye on this website if i where you , and yes there is indeed a other one coming up under the name of ( Zoraida ) , aldo it`s still a tropical depression you never know what course it will take.....

http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/

 

 

 

Stay safe buddy.....

[dazedandconfused]

Hmmm, I fly out to Manila tomorrow for 6 nights, am I likely to be affected mate?

 

Not currently expected to go through Manila though it might rain a fair bit in town on Weds and Thurs.  Mind, you'll be used to that eh?

[duke007]

Not currently expected to go through Manila though it might rain a fair bit in town on Weds and Thurs.  Mind, you'll be used to that eh?

 

Looks like I'll be sat on balcony drinking Brandy & Port on Weds and Thurs with my companion then

 

Thanx for the updates guys, much appreciated

[SiamSam]

Such misery for these people. 

[manilaman]

In Cebu now and many people have family impacted - the biggest problem is they dont know what has really happened because of the lack of communication. I am helping some of the local lb's financially who need things like ferry money to get back home to look for family. I hope the texts I get when they arrive there are good news ... but I fear for them  

 

To be honest, I am not sure I am in the mood to go to the Waterfront tonight to see the Queen of Cebu pageant

[Ernesto]

I think it might be difficult to get flights in and out to Philippines at the moment. All the rescue organisations ar on their way and also man Filipinos ar going home to see their families.but any way  Good luck !

[manilaman]

Ernesto,

 

I was in Angeles during the Typhoon (my flight to Cebu was cancelled) and we had a little peripheral wind/rain but it is fine. I am now back in Cebu and the city is functionaing as normal  - apart from a few extra (aid related) expats in the hotels - it's business as usual. However, Leyte is devastated. Many people in Cebu have lost family members in Leyte - it tragic

[kijang]

The photos and videos of the devastation are heartbreaking

 

Living in Mactan, Cebu, I have seen the frequency of military cargo flights doing the Cebu-Tacloban shuttle of goods pick up dramatically in recent days

 

That said, there is little word of relief efforts for other islands that suffered equally from the typhoon - Malapascua, Bantayan, Negros, and Coron

 

Nothing to do but hope, pray, and donate to your favored relief organization

[Stealth007]

Airport Road At Tacloban Before And After

 

 

 

[Stealth007]

Tacloban City Convention Center - Before And After

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stealth007]

Tacloban City - Quezon Boulevard - Before And After

 

 

 

 

[Stealth007]

@Manilaman

 

Headoff for your input and support to and for our girls there on the ground....

 

From here at home i have send so far € 500 to help some of my friends with also travel ass to visit familie and friends and money to buy the oh so needed goods and supplies.....

To bad that i will not be there on the ground for the time been , that will be the case twice next year in Mei and Nov of 2014 but any small help is more then welcome to our girls right now.....

 

Greetz , stealth

[azza33]

Amazing overhead shots...

[strocube]

Wow, such devastation. My heart goes out to everyone affected. Hope they much needed relief as soon as possible.

[Stealth007]

MANILA, Philippines–The state weather bureau hoisted Public Storm Warning Signal No. 3 over five provinces and two islands in southern Luzon even as Typhoon Glenda maintained its strength and track on Tuesday morning.

Catanduanes, Albay, Sorsoson, Camarines Sur and Burias and Ticao islands in Masbate (all in the Bicol Region) and Northern Samar in the Visayas were placed under Signal No. 3 by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services, of Pagasa.

In its weather advisory, Pagasa said that Typhoon Glenda was estimated to be 270 kilometers east of Legazpi City, Albay, packing winds of 120 kilometers per hour and gusts of 150 kph.

“Glenda” is expected to move westward at a pace of 20 kph and is set to make landfall over the Albay-Sorsogon area Tuesday evening.

 

Signal 2 

Camarines Norte, Masbate, Marinduque, Quezon (including Polilio Island), Batangas, Laguna, Cavite, Rizal, Bulacan, Metro Manila, Samar and Eastern Samar were put under Public Storm Warning Signal 2.

 

Signal 1 

Areas under Public Storm Warning Signal 1 are Romblon, Oriental Mindoro, Occidental Mindoro, Lubang Island, Pampanga, Bataan, Zambales, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan, Quirino, Nueva Vizcaya, Benguet, La Union, Aurora and Northern Leyte (including Biliran Island).

Glenda is forecast to exit the Philippine land mass through the Zambales area on Wednesday afternoon.

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/619696/signal-no-3-now-up-in-4-provinces-as-glenda-develops-into-typhoon#ixzz37YPzWYg8
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

[Stealth007]

.

[duke007]

My missus told me this a couple of hours ago....

 

"have a tropical storm here in Manila"