maybe 1200 dead, Philippine Typhoon

[Ahriman238]

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.

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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.

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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."

My sympathies to the Filipinos, and hopes that Shroomy is alright.

What kind of emergency relief can be gotten there in a hurry? China, Indonesia, Australia and Japan are closest, how likely are they to help?

[madd0ct0r]

it's been a horrible year for cyclones - there was a category 3 last month too. I'm just hoping haiyan slackens off a little before it hits Vietnam - it's bearing directly down on my parents in law.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

it's been a horrible year for cyclones - there was a category 3 last month too. I'm just hoping haiyan slackens off a little before it hits Vietnam - it's bearing directly down on my parents in law.

According to recent updates, it's forecast to make landfall at Vietnam as "merely" a strong tropical storm though its path is going to cause it to pump a lot of rain onshore across ... pretty much the entire country.

[madd0ct0r]

and there's another tropical depression forming to the east of the Phillipines...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/24882140

fuck me this is a bad season.

[Broomstick]

I heard in passing on the radio that there were places they couldn't get to because the roads were blocked by dead bodies. I wasn't sure I heard that right, and it sounded so bizarre. Maybe I didn't hear it quite right. Regardless, it looks like some places really were devastated. Roads are impassable, but it seems mostly debris and trees.

I hope aid can be delivered quickly.

[aerius]

I'm reading reports that there are at least 10,000 dead, and likely to get worse. Lots of places are still cut off and others are pretty much wiped off the map.

As for how bad the super typhoon was, check this out:
The intensity is practically off the charts. I've never seen anything like this.

This is Hurricane Katrina at peak intensity. We all know what it did.



And this is Super Typhoon Haiyan. Unreal.

[Kuja]

That is one monster of a storm. Jesus.

[The Grim Squeaker]

aerius - arethose 2 images on the same scale?

[fgalkin]

10 thousand dead now, possibly as many as 20 thousand.

Good news is that Shroom made it through just fine.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[madd0ct0r]

good. Had news in from central Vietnam - storms passed over, the parent's in law's alleyway just stocked up on beer and cards, while Tram's extended family went for monopoly and apple fritters.

So the aid focus will be on the phillipines. I'm off to donate.

[Broomstick]

I'm glad Shroomy is OK and things weren't so bad in Vietnam.

I've read that at landfall the sustained winds were 310+ kph. Being a Midwesterner I think in tornado terms, and in terms of tornadoes that's an EF4. Except a tornado only lasts seconds, a minute at most. How long does the storm last in a typhoon? Last time we had a tornado plow through my area my spouse and I had to shout to be heard over the sound of debris hitting our home (and we didn't even take a direct hit) and that was a piddling EF1 at most... living through the worst of Haiyan must have been terrifying even if you were under shelter and the roof stayed on. God help you if you lost your shelter, airborne debris would be moving at lethal speeds. Hell, YOU could become airborne debris, that's more than sufficient wind to loft a human into the sky.

Gusts were up to 375+ mph which is just... unfathomable. EF5 territory, no wonder buildings were destroyed. Between that and a storm surge reported as somewhere between 5 and 10 meters the wonder is that anything is still left standing. At first I was thinking damage in terms of Katrina, but this is probably going to look more like one of the major tsunamis we've had since 2000.

[aerius]

aerius - are those 2 images on the same scale?

I don't think it's the same scale, but it's not the size, it's the colours. A solid wall of purple is pretty much unheard of, then add to the fact that it's a nearly symmetrical wall of purple. This typhoon was so intense that it was literally off the charts.

[Broomstick]

That satellite photo of the storm from space makes it look like Earth has a Great White Spot to go with Jupiter's red one.

[madd0ct0r]

I'm glad Shroomy is OK and things weren't so bad in Vietnam.

I've read that at landfall the sustained winds were 310+ kph. Being a Midwesterner I think in tornado terms, and in terms of tornadoes that's an EF4. Except a tornado only lasts seconds, a minute at most. How long does the storm last in a typhoon?

Depends how fast moving it is. If we're talking about a direct hit from this one, imagine a day of increasing severity rain storms, another 12 hours of max intensity where you don't go outside, no ifs, no buts and a final day and a half of declining wind and rain (although rivers ect will still be rising rapidly.)

If you live near the sea, the sea level will be 1-2m higher then usual due to the low pressure, and you've got fuckoff big waves rolling in on top of that. The sea level near river mouths will be pushed higher again by the water pushing it's way down river.

Once the soil becomes saturated enough, any tensile capacity gifted by clay content will start to disappear and you'll get landslides of the wet, heavy soil on previously (just) stable slopes. If it's not a tarmac or concrete road, forget it. If the bridge isn't big enough to fit the full water flow underneath, forget it. If you're working in rescue, and you find downed power lines meeting flooded areas, forget it.

It's an endurance event compared to the sprint of a tornado. Plus the sheer scale of the potential damage.

[Simon_Jester]

For that matter, the winds alone are gusting fast enough that they might well rip pavement off surfaces, based on some figures I've seen for that.

In personal news, one of my coworkers lost her parents in the storm; the other two Filipinas in the building did not lose any family.

[Zinegata]

I don't want to sound alarmist, but the death toll may be even worse than 20,000. Most of the pics you're seeing are just from one town - Tacloban. There are many other towns in the same island that haven't been reached yet except by aerial recon - and in some cases the towns were largely destroyed.

We need all the help we can get. Heard the George Washington was coming in 2 days but there's a lot more to be done.

The only consolation is that Manila and Luzon (largest and most populous island) was largely spared.

[Mlenk]

This is why I like living in the desert where there are no hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, etc. All I have to put up with is the heat and the very occasional flash flooding. We don't have earthquakes either.

[Broomstick]

I don't want to sound alarmist, but the death toll may be even worse than 20,000.

That's not alarmist, that's rational. Me, I'm getting annoyed at the newcasters intoning "the death toll may be as much as 10,000." Uh... no. It's going to be a lot higher. Anyone with half brain can figure that out.


And I'm sorry. I'm really sorry so many people are suffering, and so many are gone.

[Borgholio]

Relief is already on the way. USS George Washington is a day out, and Marine cargo planes have already landed. Japanese are sending workers. That said, I don't think the usual amount of relief effort is going to cut it. This is going to need a LOT of work.

[Mr Bean]

Relief is already on the way. USS George Washington is a day out, and Marine cargo planes have already landed. Japanese are sending workers. That said, I don't think the usual amount of relief effort is going to cut it. This is going to need a LOT of work.

That's something that surprised me, the Washington got underway recently. Given the size of this storm I would have thought the fleet was right behind it ready to give aid the second the storm passes, unless there was anchorage concerns or fears it would hit the fleet base.

[Borgholio]

Washington was in Hong Kong, so they had to wait for the storm to pass. That and they loaded her up with extra supplies.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

According to the government they've declared a state of National Calamity. You know it's bad when they're saying terms most of us don't hear of, from what they're saying some of the people who assess the damage have themselves been affected so in many places they don't know the extent of the damage.

[Zinegata]

I don't want to sound alarmist, but the death toll may be even worse than 20,000.

That's not alarmist, that's rational. Me, I'm getting annoyed at the newcasters intoning "the death toll may be as much as 10,000." Uh... no. It's going to be a lot higher. Anyone with half brain can figure that out.


And I'm sorry. I'm really sorry so many people are suffering, and so many are gone.

The reason why I do not want to sound alarmist is that there is an ongoing political struggle in the country, with a number of powerful and influential senators (including the family of two former presidents ousted for corruption) being charged for corruption because they essentially stole hundreds of millions in pork barrel funds.

Ever since that scandal broke and the charges were filed there has been an overdrive of anti-government posting, especially online, over every government mistake. Essentially, sad as it may sound, there are elements in Philippine politics who are actively exaggerating the problem in order to discredit the sitting administration and draw attention away from the corruption scandal.

Ironically, one of their previous spin tactics was to call for the abolition of the presidential disaster fund - calling it a form of pork barrel - and it's this paltry fund that was used for the initial relief effort.

Yes, our politics are that dirty and fucked up.