Typhoon Haiyan kills 10,000 in Philippines

"Florida is essentially at sea level"

Sea level goes up in a hurricane, way up. And the only thing worse than freshwater flood for underground wires is saltwater. And if the ground mounted transformers are flooded and destroyed you're losing power. And once power is cut, the power co can't just flip a switch without burning down the whole city, because flood damage means 0.1% of houses will catch fire and the fire dept is already busy with their own issues not to mention trees in the road and such.

I currently live in Siargao Island, Surigao del Norte.

The typhoon past us with about a distance of 190km from the eye and was anticipated to hit us first. We were issued with a signal 4 warning at Category 5 as it passed the northern parts around 2-3am. Yolanda didn't really make an real impact on the island - We only lost communications and electricity from about 9pm to 6pm the next day, had some minor roads flooded and little damage on property.

My best guess is that we got the backspin of the storm and was left with out great damage.

Before the storm past, tourists were leaving, locals were deciding to either stay or evacuate to higher grounds inland and expats tried to follow. There was problems leaving the island by boat because of the big waves and airplanes had already aborted landing on Monday. The risk was that either being hit by mudslides because of the expected 100mm rainfall, or being trapped inside of your house due the strong winds and storm surge.

Everyone seemed well informed and took appropriate action well before Yolanda would possibly hit us. We stocked up on water and food enough for a couple of days on Wednesday, on Thursday the concrete house i'm staying at got packed with people trying to get safe/shelter.

At night, Yolanda made its presence with wind and heavy rain, but thanks to low tide, we where lucky to stay un-flooded by the additional (reported) 5.5m sea-level rise.

A few hours later, it hit Tacloban/Samar (200km from us) and destroyed a lot in its path. The towns/islands where effected so hard because of high tide, which enabled the flooding.

I want to make clear that, the Government/Community/WeatherStations did a great job informing the residencies about the possible dangers.

A lot of people did evacuate, but as I said before, there was only choices between uncertainty available. I will mention that the locals here seem to have become accustom to the weather due to the ~20 typhoons/storms per year, and also seem to take it a bit lighter then they sometimes should. The weather can shift and the typhoons direction can change in an instant, hitting the least expected areas.

Im just hoping that the incoming storm wont make to difficult for the Philippines to recover! We are already preparing and are discussing possible options/evacuation plans.

My thoughts goes to those who have lost or are missing family and friends. Best regards

Having lived in the Philippines and the U.S. I have this observation. The U.S. is not more or less corrupt that the Philippines. They just do it with more _style_. By that I mean, they are just better at hiding it.

It's hard to say. You need large hurricane-proofed buildings in the higher barangays. As a person intimately familiar with the Tacloban/Leyte area, that's hard to accomplish since the area is so low-lying where it hit hardest.

The three biggest needs to prevent a large death-toll from something like this:

1. Education regarding effects of disasters (e.g. what a storm surge is, what areas are likely to be affected by landslides, etc.)

2. Basic first aid medication (having seen my fair share of misadventure in the Philippines, I can confidently say that a subsidized boy scout-style training program would work wonders there)

3. Instructions for putting together 72-hour crash bags, which should be kept in convenient locations (this is a good idea generally -- no matter where one lives a calamity could occur, and having copies of important documents/candles/matches/clean water can make a huge difference).

how about a humblebundle/indieroyale/indiegala/gog Haiyan bundle?