Well, I have come to the conclusion that I need to organize my notes better. These last few months have been extremely busy for me, and it’s been even more so busy trying to keep up with all the tragedies occurring in the Philippines. I wrote notes about the smaller typhoons that affected them, I wrote notes about the earthquake and then Haiyan was coming, and then it came and went. And I decided that I’d wait till it was over to write about it because in situations like that, the numbers and situation changes daily sometimes, and then another tropical storm has hit the Philippines. So now, I sit down and write about what has happened to those poor folks. At the end of last week November 7-9, 2013, the largest tropical storm of this season made landfall in the Philippines. They had just gone through a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that had killed 222 people on October 15,eight people were reported missing from the quake(I am sure it’s much more now that Haiyan has come through),there had been 3,189 aftershocks,94 of which had been felt. One of the main concerns prior to Haiyan making landfall was that there were approximately 5,000 living in tents because they had been displaced by the devastation caused by the earthquake…and here came a Category 5 typhoon/hurricane. Reed Timmer mentioned on Facebook that it was the equivalent of an EF5 tornado, 50 miles wide, making landfall. Judging by the pictures I’ve seen following the typhoon, I have to say that’s about right.

These are my notes from before Haiyan aka Yolanda…no offense but I really wish they’d pick one name and stick to it. James Reynold of ABS-CBN mentioned how fast and how violent this storm would be. That can be a good thing and a bad thing, the speed, not the violence of course. If it’s fast then it’ll be over with quickly, downside is that there’s less time to prepare for the oncoming storm. If it’s slow, there’s more time to prepare and and to evacuate but then it sits and sits and causes a lot of damage. Central and Southern Philippines were evacuating ahead of the storm, the downside to the topography of the area is that there were no mountains to deflect any of the brunt force of the winds. According to the U.S.Navy Joint Typhoon Warning System Haiyan was intensifying and it had max.sustained winds of 278 km/172 mph and gusts of 333km/206 mph. Hurricane Katrina’s max sustained winds were 175 mph and Sandy’s was 75 mph. for a bit of reference. In the Philippines, they had lost 2000 to Typhoon Bopha last December, so it seems as if they were going to go through something similar again. In the days prior to Haiyan’s landfall , air and sea transport was suspended,Haiyan reached 905 millibars and it was moving West-Northwest at 33kph and had a 5-6 meter high storm surge, that’s 15-18 feet. The schools and offices were shut down and the power shut off. On that note, it made me wonder, in Europe and in this situation they shut off the power ahead of such a storm, why don’t they here in the United States? There were 10 million people in the path of this storm and it was expected to exit into the South China Sea where it would then affect Vietnam. Ok that was before….now I will talk about afterwards.

It has now been 7 days since Haiyan made landfall,Tacloban received the man brunt of it.There are 4,460 people confirmed dead but they suspect the numbers may go as high as 10,000. In Tacloban there are mass burials taking place. If you know anything about disease, you know that it is necessary for the survival of the living to bury the dead as quickly as possible before disease starts to spread in the tropical heat of Southeast Asia. There are bodies strewn along road ways and bodies are still being found amongst the rubble. The bodies buried were unidentified and buried without prayers by men and teenage boys trying to do their best in a bad situation. Thousands are living out in the open exposed to the elements, including another tropical storm that hit the already devastated area.

I watched a video yesterday where a 7 month pregnant woman had clung to a piece of plywood to survive, was evacuated on a military transport but was crying because she had to leave her husband behind to fend for himself. Although the U.S. military has arrived, Navy and Marines and various aide groups have converged on the area, the problem is that they can fly the food and supplies in but there is such a shortage of gas that they can’t use trucks to transport it to where it’s needed, to the people. There are pallets of food and water sitting by the runways, waiting while people starve. This is the current situation there In the Philippines, so far removed from most of us and what we are dealing with in our daily lives. It’s shocking and heartbreaking. If you can help, please do. They need it.

Andrea McGhee

Lead Blogger-Mr Twister