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Typhoon Haiyan kills 10,000 in Philippines

theguardian.com

41–50 of 153 posts

Re: Typhoon Haiyan kills 10,000 in Philippines

#42
post #12
post #5

Wow, that's an insane death toll. To put this in perspective, last year, another super typhoon, Pablo, killed close to 2000 I believe. The year before that another devastating typhoon, Sendong, killed something like 1200. The Philippines regularly gets hit with 20 typhoons each year and the typhoon season isn't over. Each of the above mentioned typhoons hit in December. This has to be among the deadliest in Philippin…

Fortunately we missed it here in Manila also, this is very devastating for the country and it is going to be that way for some time. People without housing, food, water, and daily requirements.

You are from Manila? :D You remind of one of my favorite novels hehe, Cryptonomicon[1] a good part of the story takes place in Manila.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon

Re: Typhoon Haiyan kills 10,000 in Philippines

#43
post #3

US "news" is finally starting to cover this. I mean 10K, that is just beyond devastating, it should be front page news for months. We lost 1800 with Katrina.

The 2004 Tsunami killed 250,000 people, and that only managed to stay on the news for a few weeks.

And a good portion of that news was "check out this interview with a Swedish couple saved from the wave" sort of stuff.

Re: Typhoon Haiyan kills 10,000 in Philippines

#44
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2004 Tsunami killed 250,000 people, and that only managed to stay on the news for a few weeks.

Oh my gosh I had no idea the final toll was that high. That part of the world is being devastated.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey a total of 227,898 people died. Measured in lives lost, this it was one of the ten worst earthquakes in recorded history, as well as the single worst tsunami in history. Indonesia was the worst affected area, with most death toll estimates at around 170,000. However, another report by Siti Fadilah Supari, the Indonesian Minister of Health at the time, estimated the death total to be as high as 220,000 in Indonesia alone, giving a total of 280,000 casualties.

It is also the fifth deadliest natural disaster since 1900.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_de...

A large proportion of those killed were children.

There were no deaths in The Philippines from the tsunami.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_an...

Re: Typhoon Haiyan kills 10,000 in Philippines

#45
post #32
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly you can't throw claims like that around without a source, secondly I don't think now is the time to make FUD about which charity to donate to, thirdly that's tangential to what I was quoting (that cash is better than goods), and fourthly http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/10/typhoon-haiyan-... edit: fifthly: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...

Maybe they behave better in other parts of the world, but the Red Cross in the USA is everyone's knee-jerk reaction to throw money at, and they have many many issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Red_Cross#Controversie... http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/04/local/me-redcross4 https://www.google.com/search?q=Red+Cross+resigns (note all the resignations are different people!) http://www.usatoday.com/story/…

The controversies linked in the Wikipedia article seem pretty ho-hum for an organization the size of the Red Cross. Stuff like credit checks of volunteers, following the FDA's (stupid) rule on blood from homosexual males, a dispute with Johnson + Johnson, etc. hardly support the allegation of mass corruption in the group.

Re: Typhoon Haiyan kills 10,000 in Philippines

#46
post #42
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately we missed it here in Manila also, this is very devastating for the country and it is going to be that way for some time. People without housing, food, water, and daily requirements.

You are from Manila? :D You remind of one of my favorite novels hehe, Cryptonomicon[1] a good part of the story takes place in Manila. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon

I was in a conference in Singapore recently and found myself chatting to some guys from Manila. When I - of course - asked them if they'd read Cryptonomicon, they all but rolled their eyes! Apparently they got asked that all the time. They hadn't read the book - the language is a bit dense, I admit - but were under the impression it was massively popular amongst hackers of a certain variety, which I suppose it is.

It's a fantastic book. I probably re-reread it once a year.

Re: Typhoon Haiyan kills 10,000 in Philippines

#47

can someone who is better informed than me compare the typhoon a few weeks back in orissa, India with 12 casualties and this one. note - this isn't a rhetoric. I genuinely want to understand what is the reason for such a massive difference. I have financial interests in that exact part of India and actually have been thinking that the govt is pretty well prepared (given, well that it is India).

I mentioned this in another thread, but I will regurgitate it here.

I don't consider myself well informed. But I live in the Philippines and I have been in a high wind, light flooding typhoon and a low wind high flooding typhoon. Of the two, the high flooding typhoon caused a lot more damage and loss of life.

You can't make apples to apples comparisons on typhoons. Wind speed isn't necessarily the most destructive factor. Wind creates a lot of damage, but its flooding which creates high casualty counts. The devastating tsunamis we have recently seen is a great example of this.

From this article.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/10/21389125-typho...

> Most of the deaths appear to have been caused by surging seas that resembled a tsunami, flattening buildings and drowning hundreds, according to Reuters.

It's certainly possible that the region you mentioned in India was better prepared, but I'm guessing that the flooding was worse in the 1999 storm.

The Philippines typhoon was among the strongest to ever hit hand. It neared the theoretical maximum strength of a typhoon. One of the methods used to measure the strength of a typhoon is the Dvorak scale which goes up to 8. At the peak of the storm, it hit 8 and they could no longer measure it. They could only estimate that it went up to as much as 8.2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_technique

Re: Typhoon Haiyan kills 10,000 in Philippines

#48

"""It's worth reiterating that for all the obvious destructive power of sustained wind speeds of almost 200mph, it was the associated storm surge – the rush of water into coastal areas – which caused the worst damage in Tacloban, and most likely many of the deaths. The storm surge in Tacloban was estimated at 6m, sweeping away even concrete buildings, and bringing the sort of devastation so reminiscent of the Indian…

I've heard stories about some families who live in concrete houses decided not to evacuate, confident in being safe from the wind, only to drown in their own homes. :(

Re: Typhoon Haiyan kills 10,000 in Philippines

#49
post #39
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typhoon Haiyan is much bigger and much stronger. The wind was reported at 195 mph with 235 mph gusts. This kind of wind destroys everything on its way, peels asphalt off the roads, removes soil, etc. Phailin maxed out at 160 mph. That's quite a lot of difference.

The wind was reported at 195 mph with 235 mph gusts That's insane. I'm sure it would rip out most testing equipment. I've seen the damage from similar micro-bursts ( nothing is left standing. And I mean nothing alive. Complete devastation. It would look like thos pictures from when the meteor hit Siberian in the early 20th century. A mess of matchsticks. _______ edit: updated info Haiyan attained its peak intensity w…

I don't know that meteorologists have been able to collect all the data yet. A lot of what you are seeing in the news reports is probably info regurgitated from who knows what sources. Just as with the death toll, it will take time to come up with official numbers. As you mentioned, that could be difficult if the testing equipment couldn't handle the forces.

http://qz.com/144734/super-typhoon-haiyan-one-of-the-stronge...

> Super Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines at 4am local time today with winds near 195 mph, making it the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in recorded world history, according to satellite estimates. That astounding claim will need to be verified by actual measurements at ground level, which should be collected over the coming days.

> The storm (known as Yolanda in the Philippines) has officially maxed out the Dvorak scale, which is used to measure strong strength using satellites. That means Haiyan has approached the theoretical maximum intensity for any storm, anywhere. From the latest NOAA bulletin:

Here is a wikipedia link to the Dvorak scale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_technique

Re: Typhoon Haiyan kills 10,000 in Philippines

#50
post #31

Right now the important things needed are hospital ships, helicopters, medical supplies, drinking water, food and shelters... I feel so helpless donating just cash, so many lives need to be helped.

I hire some people in the Philippines via oDesk. They are friendly, honest, hard working, trustworthy (I bought them a laptop and Kindle), speak English pretty well, and cost less than people in the US who do similar jobs, even if I believe I am paying them pretty well by local standards. Luckily for them, they are far away from where the typhoon hit, but in terms of moving some money there, providing some work for p…

+1 ~ I used to have two ladies in the Philippines do a little part-time research work for me via oDesk for my previous job. The were absolutely fantastic. Every time a disaster strikes there (which is frequent) I touch base to make sure they're ok. I can't recommend hiring some Filipinos to help augment a local team enough. It's a way to increase your own efficiency and help raise their standard of living at the same time.
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