Philippines Haiyan rebuilding 'inadequate', says UN

Bangkok Post via AFP: The Philippines has not done enough to rebuild after Super Typhoon Haiyan, as thousands remain in shanties without power or water for nearly two years, a United Nations representative said Saturday.

Many storm survivors in the central region have had to endure relocating to evacuation camps up to three times since Haiyan struck in 2013, and the sub-standard housing leaves them vulnerable to future typhoons, said Chaloka Beyani, UN special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons.

"While the government is to be commended in terms of its immediate responses, its attention to ensuring sustainable durable solutions for IDPs (internally displaced persons) remains inadequate to date," Beyani said in a statement posted on the UN website.

Beyani was in the Philippines in late July to check on the government's handling of people displaced by Haiyan and by fighting between the military and Muslim rebels in the south.

Aside from falling short of safety standards, the wood-and-tin "bunkhouses" also leave women and girls vulnerable to sexual abuse and early pregnancy, Beyani said. The box-like shanties also rob the storm survivors of their "privacy and dignity" as they struggle to rebuild their lives, he said....

An aerial view of Tacloban City after Typhoon Haiyan struck, shot by Russell Watkins/Department for International Development, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Two dead as Typhoon Noul slams Philippines on way to Japan

M. Alex Johnson in NBC News: At least two people were killed and almost 4,000 others were forced to evacuate their homes as Typhoon Noul slammed into the northern Philippines, the national disaster agency said Monday.

Noul — called Typhoon Dodong locally — weakened slightly as it hovered about 137 miles northeast of the Batanes Islands at around 7:15 p.m. local time (7:15 a.m. ET) on Monday. The typhoon was packing winds of 87 mph and gusts of up to 106 mph.

Earlier, waves of 46 feet were recorded in the open ocean off the coast, according to the weather bureau. Noul was gathering speed and was expected to start heading for southern Japan by Tuesday.

NDRRMC, the national disaster agency, said Noul made a direct hit Sunday with buckets of rain and mammoth waves. Two men, ages 74 and 46, were electrocuted while trying to repair their damaged roof Sunday in Cagayan Province northeast of Luzon, the agency said. About 3,800 people remained in shelters Monday morning in Isabela and Cagayan provinces, where large areas were without power.

Despite the destruction wrought by Noul, it also brought much needed rains to rice and corn farms that had been hit by intense summer heat....

Typhoon Noul shot by NASA, May 8, 2015

Stronger storms feared as dry spell forecast in Philippines

Zee News: The disaster-haunted Philippines is likely to be hit by stronger typhoons this year as warming ocean surfaces contribute to a dry spell, the state weather service warned Wednesday.

The Asian archipelago, whipped by about 20 typhoons and storms each year, is now in the grips of the "El Nino" phenomenon that can make storms "stronger" and more "erratic", weather service chief Vicente Malano said.

"El Nino may cause the behaviour of tropical cyclones to become erratic, affecting (their) tracks and intensity," he said in an advisory, adding that the same number of storms are expected.

"The tropical cyclone tracks are expected to shift northward and (their) intensity could become stronger," Malano said.

Super Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest ever to hit land, left more than 7,350 people dead or missing in central regions of the Philippines in November 2013 as it dumped tsunami-like waves on coastlines, wiping out entire towns....

2013's Typhoon Haiyan viewed from a Navy research satellite

More Filipinos pushed into poverty by Haiyan, high rice prices

Terra Daily via AFP: Super typhoon Haiyan and surging rice prices pushed the number of Filipinos living in poverty to 25.8 percent in the first half of last year despite strong economic growth, official data released Friday showed.

The 1.2 percent rise was compared to the 24.6 percent of people in the Philippines who were considered poor a year earlier, the Philippine Statistics Authority said in a statement. The increase followed Haiyan which struck in November 2013, killing more than 7,350 people and ravaging an area as big as Portugal in the nation of around 100 million people.

The government agency deemed a family of five who lived off 8,778 pesos ($199.3) a month -- roughly $1.33 per person a day -- to be poor.

Nevertheless the Philippines, one of Asia's fastest-growing economies, saw the average income of Filipinos rise by 6.4 percent in the first six months of 2014, Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said in the statement. "The very high prices of food wiped out the gains in per capita income," he added. The areas ravaged by Haiyan saw the most substantial jumps in poverty levels, he said....

Adaptation in Philippine farming

Oliver T. Baccay at the Philippines Information Agency:  ...As a region which plays a key role in the balance of agricultural productivity, Cagayan Valley cannot afford to decrease production these days as it will have an effect on the entire country’s economy. But the threat disguised as Climate Change looms and may affect production, farmer-leaders told agriculture officials recently.      

Just how resilient and adapted to natural calamities as an effect of climate change are the region’s preferred crops would be a lingering question.

The region is within the typhoon belt, prone to different disasters that cause devastations to farmer’s productivity. Without these calamities, farmers’ produce would be enough to feed the nation  or even a surplus production for export.

With these challenges, the workers of the Department of Agriculture (DA) Region 2 as well as other agriculturists continue to stretch their research muscles to address these challenges not only to ensure production, but also to develop disaster-resilient crops. These efforts, Hector Tabbun, information officer, said include the researches for drought and water resistant corn, palay, legumes and root crop varieties.

 ...DA also constructed several Small Water Impounding Projects (SWIPS) in different areas to harvest sufficient water during the rainy season to be utilized during the dry season. The farmers are also continuously taught how to harvest rainwater from the small type water reservoir as a climate change adaptation measure....

Not in Cagayan, but a rice field in the Nagacadan Rice terraces, shot by Schubert Ciencia Shubert Ciencia, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Second Christmas in ruins in Philippine disaster zone

Terra Daily via AFP: Thousands of residents of the typhoon-weary city of Tacloban in the mainly Catholic Philippines prepared Wednesday to mark their second Christmas in ruins following two giant storms. A huge streetside Christmas lantern was the sole sign of the nation's most festive holiday in the city's Magallanes district, where shanties have replaced a community flattened by tsunami-like waves whipped up by Super Typhoon Haiyan 13 months ago.

Magallanes shopkeeper Aida Comendador, 46, lined up at the nearby local social welfare office to collect up to 10,000 pesos ($224) in government subsidies for repairs to her severely damaged house in the city on the central island of Leyte.

"We've managed to put up a ramshackle shelter out of 20 pieces of roofing sheets donated by a Catholic charity, but we still don't have a door and proper beds," the mother of three told AFP.

Haiyan, the strongest typhoon ever to hit land, left 7,350 people dead or missing, and the coastal neighbourhood of Magallanes highlights the slow pace of reconstruction.

Roughly a million people need to be moved away from Magallanes and other coastal areas deemed vulnerable to the monster waves generated by Haiyan, according to a 160-billion-peso ($3.6 billion) government rebuilding plan....

Temporary shelters provided by the United Nations sit beside remaining damage from Typhoon Haiyan as the aircraft carrying U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Tacloban City, Philippines, to announce $25 million in fresh U.S. recovery aid on December 18, 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]

Lives of danger, poverty on Philippines' typhoon coast

Terra Daily via AFP: Life is a constant throw of the dice for farmer Nilo Dilao and other residents of the Philippine island of Samar, the ground zero for many of East Asia's deadliest storms. Homes, boats, crops, livestock and jobs are all on the line each time the monster winds roar in from the Pacific Ocean, leaving survivors to mourn their dead and pick up the broken pieces, year in and year out.

"Life is a struggle here," Dilao, 43, told AFP a few days after Typhoon Hagupit destroyed his shanty and killed more than 20 people this month. He likened the plight of local people to those of stray chickens. "We're scratching at the soil non-stop in hopes of finding a scrap to eat," he said.

Hagupit came a year after Super Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest ever storm recorded on land, killed 7,350 people on Samar and neighbouring islands.

Samar, about half the size of Belgium, is often the first major Asian landmass hit by the more than 20 tropical storms or typhoons that are born in the Pacific Ocean each year.

With much of the mountainous island stripped by deforestation, most of its 1.8 million residents live on narrow, sea-level strips along the coast, at the mercy of the storms' ferocious winds and tsunami-like ocean surges....

In Samar, after 2013's Typhoon Haiyan. US Department of Defense photo

From Haiyan to Hagupit - what changed?

IRIN: On the second full day of operations responding to what entered the Philippines as Typhoon Hagupit - since downgraded to a tropical storm - national officials say disaster coordination has improved since last year’s Super Typhoon Haiyan.  Tacloban, the city that bore the bulk of the estimated 6,000-plus fatalities 13 months ago, has reported no casualties thus far.

“We evacuated sooner this year. People need longer than one to two days to evacuate,” Tacloban’s mayor Alfred Romualdez told IRIN, admitting he broke rules to suspend classes before the storm had even entered the Philippine Area of Responsibility. “People need three to four days to evacuate. You cannot force evacuation. Before they can think about evacuating, they need to borrow money from their employer. Then it takes at least one day to return home to provinces.”

More than one million people were transferred to 3,640 evacuation centres, as reported by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) on 8 December. Eight of the country’s 17 administration regions were affected.

In Tacloban, some 50,000 people were evacuated ahead of the storm, almost all of whom were already displaced from last year’s Typhoon Haiyan. Romualdez estimated at most 6,000 newly displaced. Almost all have returned to their residences.

Rather than waiting until damage assessments were in to request additional military presence, Romualdez requested military reinforcements four days before the typhoon hit, allowing the city to prepare relief goods and “custom-fit” disaster risk reduction to Tacloban’s needs, he said.

....Assistant-Secretary Camilo Gudmalin, who oversees for DSWD the region of Western Visayas, parts of which were still emerging from last year’s super typhoon when they were hit again in the latest calamity, said coordination between national and international responders has improved....

NASA image of Hagupit, December 5, 2014

Typhoon Hagupit: at least three dead and a million evacuated in Philippines

Kate Hodal in the Guardian (UK): At least three people have been killed and over a million evacuated after typhoon Hagupit tore into the Philippines this weekend, causing landslides, pummelling houses and stirring up gusts of 170kph (106mph) across the country’s central islands.

But the disaster-prone nation – which sees up to 20 typhoons a year – was spared from the extreme death and devastation of last year’s typhoon Haiyan, which killed over 6,000 people and displaced around 4 million, thanks to evacuation and national preparedness strategies that saw aid and government agencies deliver provisions and supplies ahead of the storm.

Hagupit, which is named “Ruby” in the Philippines, was the most powerful storm to hit the country this year. A category 3 typhoon when it made landfall on eastern Samar island on Saturday night – the same place last year’s typhoon Haiyan first struck – Hagupit is thought to have destroyed around 80% of all the homes along some coastal areas, where it also washed away rice crops, Reuters reported.

...Whereas the national government was criticised for its slow relief and debris-clearance efforts after Haiyan, this year military troops were on hand to help clear roads and the air force was on standby to help deliver aid or participate in rescue missions ahead of time, local media reported...

NASA image of Typhoon Hagupit on December 6, 2014

Super typhoon intensifies as it threatens Philippines

Terra Daily via AFP: A super typhoon gained strength on Thursday as it tracked towards the Philippines, threatening more devastation for mostly poor communities where thousands of people have died in an annual tirade of mega-storms.

Weather forecasters warned Hagupit, already generating wind gusts of 240 kilometres (149 miles) an hour, would continue to intensify as it swept in from the Pacific Ocean, and likely hit eastern islands on Saturday.

"Let's prepare for everything," President Benigno Aquino told a nationally televised meeting of disaster agency chiefs, after hearing warnings of giant storm surges and house-destroying winds.

Authorities said Hagupit would likely hit or pass near areas yet to recover from Super Typhoon Haiyan, the most powerful storm ever recorded on land that killed or left missing more than 7,350 people in November last year.

In Tacloban, one of the cities worst-hit by Haiyan, some residents began evacuating from vulnerable coastal areas well ahead of Hagupit's expected arrival, while others emptied supermarket shelves of essential supplies....

NASA image of Hagupit, taken December 4, 2014

Super-Typhoon Hagupit to hit Philippines; millions affected

Jon Plotkin in Decoded Science: The Philippines has been hit hard By Super-Typhoons (a Super-Typhoon has winds over 150 miles per hour) in the past two years: First Haiyan in 2013; then Rammasun in 2014. Now comes possibly the most powerful storm ever to hit land — Super-Typhoon Hagupit.

... Unfortunately, Super-Typhoon Hagupit will strike areas already battered by typhoons in the last year. It is on a track to be about as destructive as a typhoon can be, skirting the Philippines just offshore, so that its circulation is minimally affected by interaction with the land, but so that the circulation affects millions of people.

The typhoon is forecast to pass within a hundred miles of the major metropolitan area of Manila, which has a population of over twenty-one million. As of this morning, Hagupit has winds estimated at 180 miles per hour.

These are forecast to increase to 190 miles per hour by tonight, and persist for at least 24 hours. This would make Hagupit one of the strongest storms ever recorded, and place it close to the theoretical maximum for a tropical cyclone. Gusts could top 225 miles per hour. The damage caused by that kind of wind is catastrophic....

NASA image of Hagupit, December 4, 2014

The ‘Yolanda’ tragedy

Babe Romualdez in the Philippine Star: It’s been a year after that fateful day on November 8, 2013 – but to this day, no one can say for certain how many people perished in the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda [also known as Haiyan]
.  Estimates on the number of casualties are as high as 7,000 with some 1,800 missing or presumed dead – which is not too far from the projection made by police chief superintendent Elmer Soria who was eventually sacked as Eastern Visayas regional head for saying the number of fatalities could reach 10,000.

No one could have predicted the kind of devastation that Yolanda would bring, with the super typhoon now having gained infamy as the strongest ever to hit not only the Philippines but the world – whose power was described by meteorologists as “off the charts,” and that its intensity could not be tracked or handled by widely used satellite intensity scales because it has approached the “theoretical maximum intensity for any storm, anywhere.”

As some experts have noted, no amount of preparation could have spared Eastern Visayas from the intensity of the super typhoon. This was particularly true with Tacloban City that was the hardest hit because its location put it in the middle of two bodies of water that hit it with towering waves as high as five meters brought about by the storm surge – the first one coming from the direction of the Pacific Ocean through Tacloban Bay, then the second one from Cancabato Bay.

Storms, typhoons, earthquakes and other natural calamities do not choose – they can hit any country regardless of economic stature, they do not distinguish  “names” nor political affiliation, neither religion nor social status. Devastating as they are, tragedies such as that wrought by super typhoon Yolanda can also bring out the best in people, seen in the way Filipinos banded together as they gave donations, volunteered time and effort to repack relief items and offered prayers for casualties as well as survivors. The response from the international community was – for lack of a better word – overwhelming, with help still pouring in until this very day to speed up the rehabilitation of the areas that were damaged....

Typhoon Haiyan viewed from the International Space Station, November 9, 2013

The most vulnerable populations to climate change: floods, droughts and extreme weather

Catherine Griffin in Science World Report: While climate change can benefit some locations, other areas are more at risk. Now, scientists have taken a look at which sections of the world's population are left most at risk to food shortages and extreme weather events.

Extreme weather events can leave populations with not enough food both in the short- and long-term. That's why scientists decided to take a look at which populations could be most affected by these events. More specifically, they tracked the effects on four countries, including Russia, East Africa, Pakistan and the Philippines, which all experienced extreme weather events that ranged from drought to flooding.

Climate change is expected to increase the intensity and frequency of heatwaves and floods. Although there's no scientific evidence to show that a specific weather event would not have happened without climate change, the risk of the event does indeed increase. In fact, the new findings show that the heat wave that occurred in Russia and the drought that occurred in East Africa were most likely caused by climate change.

"Weather has always affected flood security, particularly for many of the world's poorest people," said John Ingram, one of the lead authors of the new study, in a news release. "Perhaps we think of farmers or fishermen first, but extreme weather will affect many more people in other ways too. While direct measures such as emergency preparedness and the strengthening of response-related institutions is helpful, this study has identified the need for a wider cultural shift to ensure the poorest and most vulnerable are properly protected."...

US Army photo of 2010 flooding in Pakistan

Disaster-resilient school design in the Philippines

Maricris Irene V. Tamolang in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: While some schools in the Philippines serve as evacuation centers in times of calamities, none are especially designed to adapt to and withstand natural disasters. Like other structures vulnerable to tropical storms, schools get damaged or worse, destroyed, depriving evacuees the safety they most need.

To address this problem, three incoming senior architecture students at the University of the Philippines Diliman came up with a climate-adaptive and disaster-resilient school design strong enough to survive supertyphoons like “Yolanda.”

With inputs from the group’s adviser, Nicolo del Castillo, “Taklob,” which means cover (derived from the word “Tacloban”), topped the school category of “Build Forward,” a competition sponsored by a property developer. The team members modeled Taklob after the structural design of a bridge introduced in their Architectural Structures IV class last semester, said Rafael Khemlani, who suggested the idea.

This model mainly accounted for the arches and cable wires that replaced the conventional columns in most construction projects, he said. Each classroom has an area of 76.5 sq m. It has a restroom and an evacuation supply storage—both located at the rear side—and doors at both ends of the front side. The floor is elevated 1 meter from the ground to prevent damage from storm surges.

...“We won’t call it a green design because the main element used is mostly steel,” Mervin Afan said. “But it is sustainable because of its tropical feature, allowing air to pass through easily. It is climate-adaptive because of its flexibility. During hot days, you can leave the storm shutters open and when the rainy season sets in, you can keep them closed.”...

A Philippine resident sits outside of his home in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan. US military photo

Typhoon in Philippines raises concerns over evacuation centers

Philippine Star via Xinhua: The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Friday that its teams were conducting assessments of the areas in the Philippines affected by Typhoon Rammasun (known locally as Glenda).

IOM said in a statement that a Category 3 storm earlier this week had prompted the evacuation of over 500,000 people and claimed at least 40 lives.

Initial findings from the worst affected province, Albay in Bicol, found that 42,000 houses are heavily damaged or destroyed, according to IOM, who declared it was ready to support the Philippine authorities in the construction of stronger houses once needs were confirmed.

Rammasun was the first typhoon to hit the country since the devastating super typhoon Haiyan last November.

Despite the success of the pre-emptive measures, the lack of safe evacuation centers remained a key concern, especially in the Haiyan affected region, said IOM....

A tree down in Quezon City, thanks to Glenda/Ramassun, shot by krichard2011, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

Typhoon shuts down Philippine capital, triggers mass evacuations

Reuters: Philippine authorities evacuated almost 150,000 people from their homes and shuttered financial markets, government offices, businesses and schools on Wednesday as typhoon Rammasun gathered strength and hit the capital, Manila.

The typhoon, the strongest to hit the country this year, has already torn through eastern islands, toppling trees and power lines and causing blackouts. On Wednesday, it brought storm surges to the Manila Bay area and prompted disaster officials to evacuate slum-dwellers on the capital's outskirts.

"The wind is very strong, stronger than the rains. It's something that I've never experienced in the past," Mark Leviste, vice governor of Batangas province south of the capital, said in a radio interview.

Parts of the Philippines are still recovering from Typhoon Haiyan, one of the biggest cyclones known to have made landfall anywhere. It killed more than 6,100 people last November in the central provinces, many in tsunami-like sea surges, and left millions homeless.

Typhoon Rammasun was gusting up to 185 kph (115 mph) on Wednesday with sustained winds of 150 kph (93 mph) near its center....

Typhoon Rammasun on July 15, 2014, in a NASA image

Business boost needed to sustain Philippines post-Haiyan recovery

IRIN: Progress made during recovery stages after the November 2013 Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines could be undermined without job creation strategies to secure stability beyond short-term livelihood projects, warn aid agencies and government officials.

“We have moved on from life-saving food assistance - critical at the onset of any emergency. We need to focus on livelihood creation that will ensure food security in the long term,” said Dipayan Bhattacharyya, in charge of food security for the UN World Food Programme in the Philippines.

“People are clamouring for two things: jobs and shelter,” said Fe Kagahistian, cash coordinator for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Manila.

“Typhoon survivors now need jobs that will go beyond short-term cash for work programmes. They need jobs that will allow them to provide for their basic needs with a little extra to save for the future,” she said.

Alarm over post-Haiyan evacuation centre shortage

IRIN: A shortage of viable evacuation centres in areas hit by Typhoon Haiyan (locally named Yolanda) has humanitarians and officials in the Philippines concerned that survivors will not have alternative accommodation in case of another one. The typhoon season usually lasts from June to November.

“We urgently need to identify alternative evacuation centres,” said Conrad Navidad, emergency preparedness and response coordinator for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a global humanitarian agency.

Haiyan, the category 5 super-typhoon that barrelled through central Philippines in November 2013, damaged or destroyed more than one million homes across an area roughly the size of Portugal, affecting more than five million people.

An IOM survey in 10 of the most affected towns in Eastern Samar and Samar, the two provinces hardest-hit by Haiyan, showed that only 53 of the 634 of pre-Haiyan evacuation centres identified by the government could be used in the event of another typhoon.

An estimated three million people have received emergency shelter assistance in the form of tents and tarpaulins, while about 675,000 received building and roofing materials to rebuild their own homes....

Eastern Samar Province, Republic of the Philippines (Nov. 15, 2013) A Filipino marine stands guard at the village of Guiuan in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan.

UN lauds Philippines for disaster risk reduction initiatives

Jerry Esplanada in Emergency Management via McClatchy News: The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in Asia that have made "striking paradigm shifts" in disaster risk reduction and management, according to the head of the Geneva-based United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

Margareta Wahlstrom, also UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special representative on disaster risk reduction, on Saturday reported that Manila is "developing more sophisticated methods of gauging the impact of typhoons following 'Haiyan,'" also called Supertyphoon "Yolanda," which devastated Eastern Visayas in November.

"Even though Cyclone Haiyan claimed over 6,200 lives when it struck the Philippines, many more were spared because of early warnings and evacuations, particularly in the province of Cebu," she said in a statement issued the day before the opening of the 6th Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Bangkok.

Like the Philippines, Bangladesh "has one of the best cyclone preparedness programs today, having lost hundreds of thousands of lives in the past," Wahlstrom pointed out. Indonesia, for its part, "has made disaster risk reduction a pillar of its national development policy," she said.

"A similar revolution needs to take place in managing disaster risks across public and private sectors in the region in order to stop the hemorrhaging of assets and wealth caused by disasters," she emphasized. According to the UNISDR chief, "there are encouraging signs that the business community across Asia is alert to the issue."...

Typhoon damage post-Haiyan, US State Department photo

Mangroves help shield coastal areas from storm surge

Butch D. Enerio in the Business Mirror (Philippines): Close to a thousand civil servants from different national and local offices, employees from private companies and students trooped to the shore of Taytay, El Salvador City in Misamis Oriental, on Thursday for their unified gesture to celebrate the World Environment Day (WED). They planted mangroves.

This year’s celebration, which is anchored on the theme, “Small Islands and Climate Change,” with the slogan—“Raise Your Voice, Not the Sea Level”—aims to promote worldwide awareness and action for the environment.

“It intends not only for people to realize their shared responsibility in taking care of mother earth, but for them to become agents for positive environmental change,” said Ruth M. Tawantawan, Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) regional director for Northern Mindanao.

The Wednesday celebration was spearheaded by the DENR and the Philippine Information Agency in Northern Mindanao.

...The DENR said mangroves protect coastal communities from future typhoons and storm surges and other extreme weather events that may occur because it serves as buffer-shielding the coastal areas—as it also provides nursery grounds for fish, prawns and crabs that support fisheries production. Originally, the Philippines has 500,000 hectares of mangrove forest, but due to coastal development, land conversion and reclamation, only less than 100,000 hectares are visible in the country today....

Bamboo bridge and Mangroves at Bakhawan Eco-park and Research Centre,  shot by Paolobon140 , Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license