61–70 of 153 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was clear days before landfall that this was a huge storm; the ships should have already been enroute, and other supplies staged in Guam and Okinawa.
Wouldn't travelling from Okinawa to Philippines have put those ships in the path of the storm?
News reports before the typhoon hit said 4000 people had been evacuated. Why only 4000? Lack of resources? Now that the typhoon has devastated the philippines, the international community is sending aid, money, resources. Why can't the same be done before a disaster like this hits? I'm sure the millions pouring in now could have gone a long way to evacuate people or set up shelters, dams, pumps, before it killed 10,0…
and yes prevention costs less almost always.
This could have clearly been avoided. See what India did with Phalin, with an early warning system and planned evacuation: http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/10/13/india-cyclone-phail... Less than 20 people died.
I don't know, there are a lot of variables. As someone else mentioned, not only was this storm stronger, but it was at the theoretical maximum strength that a storm could be. So, it's possibly among the strongest ever to hit land. You can't get good info from the news and of course any government will has its own agenda to look good. Getting good data from 3rd world countries is also hard. We took a direct hit (eye p…
It's easy to make armchair judgements and comparison when not armed with all the facts.
The truth is, the country will always have issues (bureaucracy, corruption, etc) dealing with these natural disasters, but combatting poverty will go much further in avoiding loss of life. The vast majority of those affected have a hand to mouth existence and have basically no choice but to live in areas that put them in the highest risk (low lying, coastal, flood prone) in structures that are all but guaranteed to fail in a storm.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm also in Dumaguete. gavhug at gmail com.
Gavin? I have been in contact with you already. I didn't know you were still around though. Are you still doing the Ruby meetups? Edit: Yep, that's you. I have you in my contacts list. I will send you another email. ;) Edit Edit: And yes, for those of you reading this comment, this is an indication of how small the tech world here is, even in a decent sized city in the Philippines.
http://heart-2-heart-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/s...
This could have clearly been avoided. See what India did with Phalin, with an early warning system and planned evacuation: http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/10/13/india-cyclone-phail... Less than 20 people died.
How this could have been avoided is likely a touchy subject at the moment. Even the president walked out of his meeting with the local officials to cool his head off from great dismay.
Cheap, easy-to-assemble, open source technologies that will help communities to protect themselves will really change the world :-(
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.
Totally agreed. The US (including the rest of the First world countries) has the means and the ability to do so much in the name of humanitarian efforts. It is sad to see these types of disasters fall by the wayside. Anyone still remember Puerto Rico?
As a Puerto Rican in a thread about natural disasters I don't know what you're talking about.
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.
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…
It seems like there are two separate things needed -- overall increase in wealth creation, and better survivability of structures (or at least shelters) at the current price points (or maybe in the price points somewhat above the current point.) (I was looking at being in Cebu or Leyte for diving last week, but my ear was slightly sore so I went to Bangkok first instead. Pretty happy about that.)
