According to The Guardian news source, “an
average of 20 typhoons hit the Philippines ever year. In 2011, typhoon Washi
killed 1,200 people, destroyed more than 10,000 homes and displaced a further
300,000 residents. Bopha, the strongest storm to hit last year, flattened three
coastal towns on the southern island of Mindanao, killing 1,100 people and
destroyed crops, property, and infrastructure." (Source)
This year, forecasters predicted what was
first called a super typhoon. It had winds up to 127 mph and after passing
between the Philippines and Taiwan, was set to hit Hong Kong, with a strong
chance of it hitting southern China. It started out with winds past 150 mph,
but those winds started calming down to winds mostly around 109 mph, so it was
then classified as a severe typhoon.
I believe that
due to the storms in the past few years, the government and people of the
Philippines have learned how to better deal with this kind of hazard. Before
the storm hit, they began evacuating northern coastal villages, suspending
ferry services and called in fishing boats. They made preparatory emergency
response procedures in southern areas and also sent storm alerts to many of the
provinces in parts of the Philippines. They cut off power and communications,
hospitals prepared for a possible influx of patients and they began stocking up
on food and water. Hong Kong and China began shutting down flights and
shipping, as well as travel between China and Taiwan. Fishing boats were asked
by the Guangdong (a southern Chinese province) asked fishing boats to head in,
as well as in Shanwei, and other provinces also took precautionary measures by
evacuating their citizens.
I think that
all these procedures are a really good example of knowing people knowing what
kind of hazard-prone areas they live in and setting up warning systems, evacuation,
and reactionary plans to those hazards. It is, I believe, a crucial step in
minimizing not only financial damages but also, and most importantly, human
losses. As we learned in the Disaster Simulation game, putting in warning
systems greatly helped prevent loss of life.
However, more precautionary
measures could have been taken, in my opinion. Though the typhoon itself didn't kill too many people, the winds and rain increased an already heavy monsoon
season in that region, and created a surplus of landslides that hit several
towns in the Philippines which then ended up killing a total of around 47
people. I feel like, knowing how this kind of season works, things could have
been done to the land most likely to create a landslide, lands that were
probably already very steep and with looser soil. I think that some kind of “breaker”
(like trees act as breakers for wind and storms) for the ground could have
slowed the moving land and decrease momentum, and thereby decreasing the impact
of the landslides. I am no expert in this kind of thing, and have zero idea of
this kind of thing is possible. There may have also been monetary reasons why
this kind of thing wasn't done. If the governments or towns and villages in
place in the Philippines could not have afforded such secondary measures, that
could be part of the reason why the landslides ended up being as bad as they
were. I think it is also a could example of how while a disaster itself can
cause damage, it can also start a sort of chain reaction, where secondary
events can cause just as much damage or more. 
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