November 14, 2013

A U.S. aircraft carrier and two escort cruisers arrived today off the Philippines coast to help relieve the suffering of the survivors of Typhoon Haiyan. One of the strongest storms in recorded history, Haiyan smashed into the central Philippines on November 8 with winds approaching 200 miles (320 kilometers) per hour and storm surges 40 feet (12 meters) in height. The USS George Washington, with a crew of 5,000 sailors, will provide a platform for helicopters to move supplies. The carrier is moored off the east coast of Samar Island, which took a direct hit from the storm. Other U.S. Navy vessels are expected to arrive within a week.

Even as an enormous global aid effort gathers momentum and relief supplies begin arriving, survivors remain desperate for food and water and medical supplies. Valerie Amos, the top United Nations (UN) relief coordinator in the Philippines is pleading for more than $300 million in immediate emergency aid. “There has been a lot of commentary that relief is not moving as fast as it should be,” Praveen Agrawal, the World Food Program’s Philippines representative and country director told the BBC: “The reality on the ground is there is such a level of devastation” that all relief efforts are inadequate by comparison.

Typhoon Haiyan devastated Samar and Leyte islands on November 8. (World Book map; map data © MapQuest.com, Inc.)

The mayor of the nearly destroyed city of Tacloban, Alfred S. Romualdez, yesterday urged residents to flee and, if possible, find shelter with relatives. He stated that local authorities were simply unable to provide enough food and water or maintain law and order. The first attempt by Tacloban authorities to conduct a mass burial was thwarted yesterday by armed looters whose gunfire forced a convoy of trucks carrying corpses to turn back as it approached the city limits. In Alangalang, a city in Leyte province, eight people were killed yesterday in a stampede when thousands of Haiyan survivors stormed a government-owned warehouse seeking food. The mob carried away more than 100,000 sacks of rice.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has announced that more than 1 million farmers have been impacted by Typhoon Haiyan. The storm wrecked hundreds of thousands of acres of rice. The area’s sugar cane crop is also lost. FAO official Jeff Tschirley told the BBC, “The sugar cane fields can be recovered relatively well even if the harvest is lost. But numerous coconut plantations have been completely flattened, and with coconuts you are looking at multiple years to recover the productivity.” The Philippines is the world’s largest producer of coconut oil, a major source of foreign currency.

Haiyan also destroyed hundreds of fishing villages, including boats and gear, severely affecting the region’s fishing industry. The FAO is asking for $24 million for immediate interventions in fisheries and agriculture as part of the UN appeal.

November 11, 2013

Philippine President Benigno Aquino declared a state of national calamity yesterday in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan. He issued a statement that thousands of survivors are desperately waiting for aid to reach them in the two worst-affected provinces, Leyte and Samar. Friday’s massive cyclone left widespread destruction and loss of life on both islands. Tacloban, the Leyte provincial capital with a population is 200,000, is nearly leveled. Authorities fear that thousands of people died in Tacloban alone. On the island of Samar, the small city of Guiuan was also largely destroyed. Relief workers told a BBC correspondent that areas in the far north of Cebu province suffered “80 to 90 percent” destruction.

The Philippine government estimates that the storm has affected some 9.5 million people—about 10 percent of the nation—and displaced more than 600,000 people. Entire regions are without food, water, and medical supplies. The head of the Philippine Red Cross, Richard Gordon, described the situation as “absolute bedlam,” and Jane Cocking, the humanitarian director for Oxfam, told the BBC that her colleagues witnessed “complete devastation. . . entire parts of the coastline just disappeared.” (Oxfam is an international confederation of 17 organizations working to find solutions to poverty and related injustice worldwide.) A team of 90 U.S. Marines and sailors based in Okinawa, Japan, landed in the Philippines yesterday to assess how the U.S. Department of Defense might best aid in the relief effort.

Meteorologists have confirmed that Haiyan was one of the strongest storms in recorded history. It smashed into the central Philippines On November 8 with sustained winds of 147 miles (235 kilometers) per hour and gusts of 190 miles (305 kilometers) per hour. The winds drove tsunami-like storm surges that were 40-feet- (12-meters-) high in places, leveling everything in their paths. In some areas, as much as 15.75 inches (400 millimeters) of rain fell, triggering massive flooding.

Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in Vietnam this morning, much weakened but, nevertheless, with sustained winds of 85 miles (140 kilometers) per hour.

Additional World Book articles:

• The Forecast: Better Weather Prediction Ahead (a special report)
• How the Ocean Affects Climate (a special report)

November 8, 2013

Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the central Philippines this morning with torrential rain, sustained winds of 199 miles (320 kilometers) per hour, and gusts of up to 235 miles (380 kilometers) per hour. The storm made landfall on the island of Samar. Meteorologists said that if initial estimates based on satellite images are borne out, this “super” Category 5 cyclone could be the most powerful storm ever to make landfall. Jeff Masters, meteorology director of Weather Underground, noted in a blog post this morning that the damage from Haiyan’s winds to Guiuan, a small city in Samar province, may be “perhaps the greatest wind damage any city on Earth has endured from a tropical cyclone in the past century.”

Typhoon Haiyan moves over the central Philippines on November 8, in an image captured by a NASA satellite. (NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team)

The storm system has a diameter of some 500 miles (800 kilometers), so large that its clouds are affecting two-thirds of the island nation and some 20 million people. Haiyan has forced millions of residents in at least 20 provinces to evacuate and seek shelter. Three central islands–Samar, Leyte, and the northern tip of Cebu–are being lashed by the storm. The capital, Manila, which is some 370 miles (600 kilometers) north of where the typhoon made landfall, is not expected to take a direct hit. Officials in Manila noted that before communications were completely cut off, they had receivled reports of collapsed buildings on Samar and Leyte and the total loss of electric power. Governor Roger Mercado of Southern Leyte informed Manila that “all roads” were impassable because of fallen trees.

“We expect the level of destruction caused by Typhoon Haiyan to be extensive and devastating, and sadly we fear that many lives will be lost,” Anna Lindenfors, Philippines director of Save the Children, told the BBC. The U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning center in Honolulu has predicted that he storm will move out of the Philippines tonight and continue on to Vietnam over the next few days.

Additional World Book articles:

• The Forecast: Better Weather Prediction Ahead (a special report)
• How the Ocean Affects Climate (a special report)