Typhoon Haiyan - one of the strongest on record hits the Phillipines

[KM]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/07/world/asia/philippines-typhoon-haiyan...

(CNN) -- Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever observed, made landfall Friday morning in the Philippines, the country's weather service reported.

Thousands of people in vulnerable areas of the central Philippines were evacuated as the monster storm spun toward the country.

With sustained winds of 315 kph (195 mph) and gusts as strong as 380 kph (235 mph), Haiyan churned across the Western Pacific into the Philippines.

Its wind strength makes it equivalent to an exceptionally strong Category 5 hurricane.

Haiyan will move over the many islands of the central Philippines over the next 18 hours before exiting into the South China Sea overnight Friday into Saturday. Haiyan will weaken slightly as the storm crosses land, but forecasters with the Philippine weather agency, Pagasa, predict that it will maintain super typhoon intensity throughout its passage of the islands.

The storm, known as Yolanda in the Philippines, is so large in diameter that clouds from it are affecting two-thirds of the country, which extends over 1,850 kilometers (1,150 miles)...

 

Super typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) enters PHL

By leoudtohan  Bohol, Philippines

CNN PRODUCER NOTE     iReporter leoudtohan captured this video of inclement weather conditions in the Bohol island province in the central Philippines as Typhoon Haiyan bears down on the country. Some low lying areas have been evacuated and locals have prepared by cutting down unstable tree limbs and suspending school classes, he said. Bohol was hit by an earthquake last month which left more than 200 dead and many residents are still in makeshift shelters. Read the latest on Super Typhoon Haiyan from CNN.
- sarahbrowngb, CNN iReport producer

Haiyan (Yolanda) becomes an extremely catastrophic super typhoon and is considered as the most powerful of all Super Typhoons for 2013. It now endangers Leyte and Samar provinces as well as the whole of Central Visayas in the Philippines.

The potential landfall area of this super typhoon is likely along the Northern Leyte on or before noontime on Friday, November 08.

Local disaster officials in Bohol, Philippines, which was affected by 7.2 magnitude earthquake last month, are on red alert, as flashfloods and landslides continue to be a threat.

The province of Bohol is placed under storm signal no. 2.
Families were evacuated in quake-hit towns on Thursday night.

Some fishermen have decided not to set sail while residents in low-lying areas have been advised to prepare for evacuation...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24846813

Monster typhoon Haiyan roars into Philippines

Typhoon Haiyan's approach is seen here from space at 22:30 on Thursday

Typhoon Haiyan, the world's strongest storm of the year, has made landfall in the Philippines with winds of up to 235 km/h (146mph).

The category-five storm was centred 62 km south-east of Guiuan, in the country's Eastern Samar province, the national weather service said.

Rescue services have reportedly lost contact with Guiuan, a town of 47,000.

Schools and offices have been closed in the region and thousands of people were evacuated amid fears of serious damage.

The storm is not expected to directly hit the capital Manila, further north.

Jeff Masters, a former hurricane meteorologist who is meteorology director at the private firm Weather Underground, told the Associated Press news agency there would be "catastrophic damage".

"The wind damage should be the most extreme in Philippines history,'' he added.

Another meteorologist, Eric Holthaus, said in a tweet that it could prove the "strongest landfall in history"...

http://www.zetatalk.com/index/zeta234.htm

http://www.zetatalk.com/poleshft/p24.htm

http://www.zetatalk.com/newsletr/issue273.htm

[Kojima]

Super Typhoon Haiyan "a turning point" for disaster risk management [UNISDR; 12 November, 2103]

Super Typhoon Haiyan "a turning point" for disaster risk management

GENEVA, 12 November 2013 - The Head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, today extended her condolences to the Philippines government and people on the heavy loss of life and extensive damage to critical infrastructure, homes and workplaces caused by the devastating Category 5 Cyclone Haiyan or Yolanda as it is known in the Philippines. 

Ms. Wahlström said: "The Philippines has borne the brunt of this extreme weather event but the fact of the matter is that it could be repeated in many other coastal locations around the world and especially in Asia. It is clear that the world is in uncharted territory when it comes to disaster events like Typhoon Haiyan and there is a need for a dramatic scaling up of our efforts to protect vulnerable populations and exposed assets from the threat of natural hazards. 

"There is an urgent need to revisit the links between disasters and poverty. It is clear that education, early warnings, urban planning and building codes are key issues for renewed consideration in a world where all bets are off in terms of disaster impacts. Typhoon Haiyan is a major setback for those of us who thought that the world was becoming more successful in reducing loss of life from major weather events. 

"Changes to the built environment combined with the influence humankind is having on climate change makes it likely that we will see more unpredictable and unprecedented weather events where storm surges, violent winds and heavy rains will combine to undermine development efforts.. 

"This is a tragedy on a par with the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 which led to a revolution in official attitudes towards disaster risk and paved the way for agreement on the world's first-ever global framework for disaster risk reduction, the Hyogo Framework for Action which is about to be replaced. 

"The greatest honour we can pay to those who have lost their lives and their homes in this tragedy is to ensure that everything possible is done to address the underlying risk factors which resulted in such huge loss of life. This event will have a major impact on the discussions now underway on a new global framework for disaster risk reduction."

[Kojima]

* Small disasters neglected despite big impact [Relief Web; 14 November, 2013]

View Original [IRIN]

DUBAI, 14 November 2013 (IRIN) - As Typhoon Haiyan dominates headlines and triggers a global humanitarian response, disaster relief experts at a workshop in Dubai today warned that small disasters risked losing out on attention. 

Such lower-scale events include the cyclone that hit northern Somalia’s Puntland region over the weekend, killing at least 140 people and up to 100,000 livestock. With such events, it is usually far from clear whether aid donors will get involved, which in turn can limit agencies’ desires to carry out assessments that could unrealistically raise expectations. 

Bangladesh, one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to natural disasters, has not declared an official emergency in around 10 years, despite experiencing major weather events, including the Haor flooding in August 2010, which displaced 10 million people, according to NGO estimates. 

“There is less money around due to the global financial crisis,” said Benedicte Giaever, director of the emergency response department at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), who organized the seminar on disaster risk reduction at Dubai’s International Humanitarian City. “There will still be money for the Philippines, and for the Haitis, but the smaller crises that we don’t see on CNN or in the newspapers won’t get funding now - those are the millions of lives that we need to save.” 

Cumulative toll 

Between 1970 and 2010, some 3.3 million people died because of natural hazards - around 82,500 a year - according to estimates by the UN and the World Bank. 

When a government chooses not to declare a humanitarian emergency, these natural disasters are often dubbed “small disasters”, “low-profile disaster events” or “severe weather events”. 

“We don’t want to take away from the importance of the big disasters, but these lower profile events happen several times a year, and even though they may not kill many people, they do have an effect and have a significant impact on livelihoods,” said Sandie Walton-Ellery, an assessment coordinator with the Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS) in Bangladesh. 

The vast majority of people affected by smaller natural disasters are already living below the poverty line, and such events can have a long-term impact, including on health and education. 

Unseen 

Many of these events do not appear in global disaster tracking databases, and without an evidence base, donors are less willing to get involved, analysts say. 

Because such disasters are often not deemed “global” or even “national”, humanitarian mechanisms to provide emergency aid are generally not put in motion. The focus of UN agencies and NGOs in the country is often on long-term development activities, such as helping populations adapt to climate change, rather than short-term response. 

“Maybe we can be better about building response in development programming,” said Walton-Ellery, who is helping to development assessments that focus more on livelihoods than lives lost, which could avoid raising too many expectations for a corresponding aid effort. 

* Disasters: Find on the map the ongoing disasters that ReliefWeb is actively monitoring.

http://reliefweb.int/disasters; Accessed 16 November, 2013

[Kojima]

* 12 Nov 2013: The Philippines – Damage by Tropical Cyclone HAIYAN [Relief Web; 12 November, 2013]

Download PDF (693.11 KB); View Original

[Kojima]

* Philippines estimates at least 10,000 died from super typhoon [Reuters; 9 November, 2013]

(Reuters) - At least 10,000 people died in the central Philippine province of Leyte after Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall, lashed the province, swallowing coastal towns, a senior police official said on Sunday.

About 70 to 80 percent of the area in the path of Haiyan in Leyte province was destroyed, said Chief Superintendent Elmer Soria.

"We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said based on their estimate, 10,000 died," Soria told Reuters.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Eric Beech)

* Super typhoon Haiyan in charts [Reuters; By Ryan McCarthy NOVEMBER 8, 2013]

Reuters reports on super typhoon Haiyan, which has killed at least three people so far in the Phillipines:

The strongest typhoon in the world this year and possibly the most powerful ever to hit land smashed into the Philippines on Friday, forcing more than a million people to flee, flooding villages and raising fears of widespread casualties.

Haiyan, a category-5 super typhoon, had wind gusts of  170 mph and 15-19 ft waves. For a slideshow the storm’s impact, click here. Reuters graphics team has put together a suite of visualizations of Haiyan and its impact:

Here’s a look at typhoons in the region — an average of 20 typhoons hit the Philippines each year, Reuters reports.

Here’s a look at how Haiyan stacks up against some of the worst storms ever:

Here’s a look at some of the highest fatality counts:

[Howard]

Typhoon Haiyan's Unbridled Destruction (Nov 10)

Officials admitted the death toll is expected to exceed 10,000 people Sunday after the extent of massive devastation became apparent..

Horrified residents spoke of storm surges as high as trees.

A foreign aid official said Sunday, November 10, that the devastation is comparable to the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

"The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami," said Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, the head of a UN disaster assessment coordination team, referring to the disaster that claimed about 220,000 lives, mainly in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Maldives, and Somalia in 2004.

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."

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.

Even by the standards of the Philippines, which is buffeted by many natural calamities -- about 20 typhoons a year, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions -- the latest disaster shocked the impoverished nation of 96 million people. If the feared death toll of above 10,000 is correct, Haiyan would be the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded in the Philippines.

Defence Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said Aquino was "speechless" when he told him of the devastation the typhoon had wrought in Tacloban.

The city's two largest malls and groceries were looted and the gasoline stations destroyed by the typhoon. Police were deployed to guard a fuel depot to prevent looting of fuel.

On Sunday, the city's overwhelmed services were reinforced by 100 special police force units sent in from elsewhere to help restore peace and order.

"On the way to the airport we saw many bodies along the street," said Philippine-born Australian Mila Ward, 53, who was waiting at the airport to catch a military flight back to Manila.

"They were covered with just anything -- tarpaulin, roofing sheets, cardboards," she said. Asked how many, she said, "Well over 100 where we passed."

In Torotoro's village, bodies could be seen lying along the muddy main road, as residents who had lost their homes huddled, holding on to the few things they had managed to save. The road was lined with trees that had fallen to the ground.

Sources

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/typhoon-haiyan-death-toll-could-reach-1...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/typhoon-haiyan-death-toll-tops-10-000-...

http://www.rappler.com/nation/43352-aid-official-destruction-like-t...

[KM]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/09/world/asia/philippines-tacloban/index...

Tacloban emerges as one of Typhoon Haiyan's most damaged targets

By Andrew Stevens and Paula Hancocks, CNN

updated 12:23 PM EST, Sat November 9, 2013

Fallen trees litter the ground at the Tacloban airport in the Philippines in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan on Saturday, November 9. The most powerful cyclone in three decades battered the Philippines, killing a number of people and leaving more than 100 bodies scattered on the streets of this coastal city. Haiyan, one of the most intense typhoons on record, plowed across the country on Friday, with monster winds tearing roofs off buildings and giant waves washing away homes.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• No building in the city of 200,000 appeared to have survived intact
• All communications except for satellite phones were down
• A couple loses three of their daughters
• Red Cross may charter a boat to reach area

Tacloban, Philippines (CNN) -- The destruction here is staggering: No building in this coastal city of 200,000 residents appeared Saturday to have escaped damage when Super Typhoon Haiyan roared through on Friday.

Roads were impassable; all communications except for satellite phones were down; medical supplies, food and water were scarce; and there were reports of looting.

The costs -- in human lives, buildings and infrastructure -- were impossible to estimate with confidence as bodies washed up on beaches and littered the streets.

The nation's interior minister said only that they would be high.

Utter devastation in Tacloban

Super typhoon death toll rises

People unable to reach loved ones

Water levels reached the second story

The million people who lived along the coast, many of them in rough-built shacks, may have been worst affected by what some said was a 5-foot storm surge that spread through the city at the height of the storm and with devastating speed.

It receded quickly, leaving a path marked by pieces of people's lives destroyed...

[Tracie Crespo]

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/09/21381516-typhoon-haiy...

Typhoon Haiyan: Red Cross estimates 1,200 dead as winds slam Philippines

There is enormous destruction and loss of life in the Philippines, after a powerful typhoon, like nothing ever seen in the area, ripped through the islands Friday. NBC's Angus Walker reports.

By Eric Baculinao and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News

MANILA – The death toll from one of the strongest typhoons ever to make landfall could top 1,200, the Red Cross said Saturday after fierce winds and flooding from Typhoon Haiyan slammed the Philippines.

Early reports suggest 1,000 people have died in the coastal city of Tacloban and at least 200 more in the Samar province, according to Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross.

Pang said the numbers came from preliminary reports by Red Cross teams on the ground.

So far, government officials have confirmed 138 deaths. At least 118 of those were on  hardest-hit Leyte Island, where Tacloban is located, national disaster  agency spokesman Maj. Reynaldo Balido told The Associated Press.

But after arriving in Tacloban on  Saturday, Interior Secretary Max Roxas said it was too early to know how many  people had died.

The death toll is expected to rise sharply as rescue workers  reach areas cut off by the fast-moving storm, whose circumference eclipsed the  whole country and which late on Saturday was heading toward Vietnam. 

The weather system nearly 200-mph winds as it rampaged through the Philippines on Friday. It was downgraded overnight from a "super typhoon," equivalent to a category 4 or 5 hurricane, to a typhoon.

Along the way, it cut off many of the country's lines of communication, making it hard to establish the extent of its damage.

Pang stressed that the death toll estimates were being checked, and that a more precise number would emerge as rescuers reached unchecked areas. 

Hundreds of homes were flattened and almost 800,000 people were evacuated to emergency shelters as Haiyan triggered mudslides, flash flooding and a storm surge with waves of up to 30 feet Friday.

Because the Philippines is made up of more than 7,000 islands — more than 2,000 of them inhabited, with their own local authorities and infrastructures — it typically takes two to three days for full reports to reach rescue agencies.

The Weather Channel's Jim Edds, in Tacloban, said there was a desperate need for drinking water for survivors. "We need it now, we needed it 12 hours ago,"he said in a brief phone call via satellite phone

Edds added that there was a massive wall of water when the storm hit, and described the current situation as chaotic. "Relief is needed here. Now."

Alastair Jamieson reported from London. NBC News' Alex M. Johnson contributed to this report.

[Kojima]

* Typhoon Haiyan hits Philippines with winds of 195mph [The Guardian; 8 November, 2013]

Enormous storm predicted to be largest ever recorded, topping hurricane Camille in 1969, hits north Pacific

Typhoon Haiyan has hit the Philippines with winds of 195mph, with experts saying "catastrophic damage" will result from what is predicted to be the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in recorded history.

Thousands of people have been evacuated and thousands more have fled their homes as the category five storm sent waves as high as 5m (15ft) ashore on the islands of Leyte and Samar in the central Philippines, overturning powerlines and leaving streets knee-deep in water.

Haiyan – the Philippines' 25th typhoon so far this year – is expected to barrel through the archipelago close to Cebu, the nation's second-largest city and home to around 2.5 million people.

With speeds at landfall of 195mph and gusts of up to 235mph, Haiyan is believed to be stronger than the world's last strongest tropical cyclone, hurricane Camille, which was recorded in the US at 190mph in 1969.

* Super Typhoon Haiyan Continues to Pound the Philippines [AccuWeather.com; 7 November, 2013]

Super Typhoon Haiyan (local name Yolanda) continues to plow through the Philippines, bringing destruction to the islands along its path.

While interaction with the islands has caused Haiyan's winds to decrease from its peak of 315 kph (195 mph), it remains a powerful storm with winds over 275 kph (170 mph) as of early Friday afternoon, local time.

Friday morning, local time, an observation site in Guiuan, Philippines, measured the sustained winds at 96 mph, before the site was disabled.

At its peak, the winds of Haiyan were equivalent to peak winds of the infamous Typhoon Tip, which was known for having the lowest sea-level pressure ever observed on Earth and its massive size.

The strength of Haiyan remains equal to that of an extremely powerful Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic.

Haiyan has already topped Utor as the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year.

"Three storms [Nari, Utor and Krosa] have crossed the Philippines at typhoon strength so far this year. All three tracked across Luzon, while Haiyan is headed toward the central Philippines," stated AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Eric Wanenchak.

The center of Haiyan will pass south of Luzon and Mindoro Friday evening into Friday night, local time, with a strength equivalent to a Category 5 or strong Category 4 hurricane.

Widespread torrential rain and destructive winds will accompany Haiyan through the central Philippines, threatening to leave a trail of destruction and triggering life-threatening flash floods.

Rain totals along the path of Haiyan could top 200 mm (8 inches). Mudslides are a serious concern in the higher terrain, where localized totals of 250 to 300 mm (10 to 12 inches) are possible.

Haiyan will also produce a severe and inundating storm surge, especially along the eastern coasts of southern Luzon and Mindoro Island.

The worst of the storm will bypass the capital city of Manila, but wind gusts could reach 80 kph (50 mph) with 25 to 50 mm (1 to 2 inches) of rain.

After slamming the Philippines, Haiyan will remain a dangerous cyclone as it emerges into the South China Sea and continues to move to the west-northwest on Saturday.

The eventual track of Haiyan will bring the storm toward Vietnam by late Sunday into Monday.

These areas will receive multiple rounds of heavy rainfall leading up to the approach of Haiyan as rainfall from former Typhoon Krosa and Tropical Storm 30W will soak the region.

Thus, any additional heavy rainfall from Haiyan early next week will quickly lead to flooding and mudslide threats.