Indonesia is known for its volcanic eruptions, and is part of the Ring of Fire. 74,000 years ago in Northern Sumatra, Mt. Toba erupted and created what is today’s largest volcanic lake. In West Java, 30 years ago, Mt. Krakatoa erupted, and become one of the most destructive volcanic events in history. In 2010, Mt. Sinabung erupted and though it only killed 2 people, 30,000 others were displaced. On Monday, this same volcano had 6 minor eruptions, causing it to be put on highest alert activity for volcanoes. This is the first sign of life from this volcano in three years, but they are predicting more eruptions, and so have moved 15,000 people out of the danger zones of the volcanoes.

Apparently, four other volcanoes have shown signs of activity in Indonesia. I think that this means that there will soon be other eruptions. The country needs to prepare for these possibilities, and as we’we've seen with previous disasters, need to educate their citizens on the kinds of dangers they pose, and what to do to stay safe. I will be watching out for more stories on volcanoes in Indonesia for the rest of the semester. 

CBC News on the Eruptions

Wall Street Journal on Mt. Sinabung

Indonesia on Volcano Alert

Further Information on Typhoon Haiyan

As time passes since the overwhelming and powerful super-typhoon Haiyan (known to Philippine locals as Typhoon Yolanda) hit the grouping of western Pacific Ocean islands on the morning of November 8th, more and more information is revealed. News sources have been collecting stories from individuals who have survived the storm, and have retold their stories of tragedy and hope. I've read stories ranging from simple civilians (from construction workers to stay-at-home moms that sell banana sweets in local markets) to government officials of provinces and their capitals in the Philippines (such as the stories of Talcoban mayor Alfred Romualdez). And as seen in my last post, much is being discussed about the Philippines' future in terms of storm preparedness.

From some of these stories, we can really see how much people didn't understand or prepare for the severity of this storm. Though they knew it was going to be a bad storm, and even though the president, Benigno Aquino III, warned that the storm-surge was "a very real danger". But these individual stories I was ready really helped to solidify the idea that people really didn’t understand the term. There was a construction worker’s family who heard the news and warnings of the storm at their neighbor’s house, since they didn’t have a TV of their own, and heard the term “storm-surge” but none of them knew what it was. When they were figuring out where to go to protect themselves from the storm, they decided on a nearby school they had used for previous typhoons, despite the fact that they were told it was actually unsafe. To me, this means it was not communicated by the media and the government how powerful this storm was going to be, or why certain places that used to be safe for other storms are not safe anymore. This will probably make the transition into better constructed buildings hard, because people will find it hard to believe that storms will be this bad.

Part of preparing for future storms in the Philippines is planting mangrove trees, which could act as resistance and help to slow down any future storm-surges or tsunami waves. They will be using geohazard mapping to determine which areas are most vulnerable to these kinds of events.  

Wall Street Journal on Typhoon Haiyan
GMA News on Planting Mangroves after Typhoon Haiyan

After Typhoon Haiyan

It has been two weeks since the day that Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines. When I first wrote about it last week, the death total, while still heartbreaking, was at 2,275 people lost. Now, it seems that number has climbed to 5,235. CNN reports that 23,501 people have been injured by the storm and 1,613 are still missing. USA Today wrote that “a stench coming from piles of debris of what once were homes indicates that bodies remain trapped underneath despite the ongoing effort to bury victims”. Firemen are still collecting the bodies of the victims, and relief organizations are still bringing in supplies and providing aid, doing their best to help the survivors.

But most are still struggling, and don’t have consistent access to safe, clean water or to food or shelter. Workers and survivors across the country are working to clear the rubble and debris, and collect any usable material that they can find. Reconstruction and rebuilding have begun, but it will be a slow process.

In fact, the action plan the government in Philippine capital city of Manila is predicted to include three to five years of reconstruction and rehabilitation, and that’s just in the hardest hit areas.

But governments within the whole of the Philippines don’t just want to recover from Typhoon Haiyan, they want to learn from it, because despite having about 20 tropical storms a year, the Philippines were still ill-prepared for this storm.

People want houses and other buildings to be constructed to be able to withstand such storms, and to put into place legal standards so that buildings in the future are constructed in a more safe and resilient way. During the storm, even evacuation shelters collapsed, so those need to be rebuilt to a better standard as well. But that won’t be enough either. They need to prevent any structures from being built too close to the shoreline in order to minimize the death and injury totals, and this will also give people a bit more time to react and respond to a disaster if they are not in the immediately affected areas (as in the shoreline). The city council in a Philippine city called Tanauan actually passed a resolution “making a non-build zone from the shoreline to 150 feet inland”. They also plan to “move15,000 of the town’s 40,000 residents to new areas”. This means that many of the residents live in unsafe areas, or areas that are most likely to be the most affected in future storms, so that they may decrease the death and injury tolls in this way also.

Another problem is education. For example, people were warned about the potential for a “storm-surge” after the initial storm. A storm surge is when the water level near the shore rises and comes onto shore. In the case of this storm, this wall of water came crashing down and destroyed the Philippine city Talcoban, and is responsible for much of the deaths occurring there. People don’t think of storm-surge as the dangerous hazard that they should, and should actually be thinking about it just like they would with a tsunami.

One of the biggest challenges and lessons that need to be learned from Typhoon Haiyan was the general outlooks and attitudes people in the Philippines had towards storms. As USA Today put it, they are often “stubbornly lax”. For example, many people refused to evacuate in the first place, before the storm hit. Even afterwards, people refuse to leave the areas of their destroyed homes, and fully intend to rebuild there, even if that area would be highly vulnerable to future storms.

Overall, the Philippines is still in great need of aid, and I hope that they can overcome such a tragedy and all its consequences. Most of all, I hope that we are all able to learn from this event and better prepare ourselves for all hazards so they don’t become disasters.  

CNN - Typhoon Haiyan Death Toll

USA Today - Learning Lessons from Typhoon Haiyan

Typhoon Haiyan Hits the Philippines

At 5:00 AM on Friday, November 8^th, the worst typhoon in recorded history hit the Philippines. This storm, according to many sources, was more powerful and more destructive that Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (three and a half times more powerful, actually, and was big enough to stretch from Spain to Sweden, according to CNN). Its winds reached 195 mph at landfall with gusts rising to 235 mph, which surpassed that of record-holding Hurricane Camille, which hit the Gulf Coast in 1969 with 190 mph winds.

Government officials and meteorologists had predicted it to be one of the worst storms ever seen, and Philippine communities have dealt with hazards such as typhoons, hurricanes, and tsunamis before. Most communities had already had disaster committees in place before this one, called Typhoon Haiyan, or to the Philippines, Typhoon Yolanda. Relief agencies are often on standby in Philippines and other areas that are most likely to be hit and hugely impacted by these events. Knowing that this was coming and having warning systems already in place, 700,000 people were able to evacuate before the storm made landfall.

But they were still not prepared for the kind of devastation Haiyan caused. Even the shelters to which people evacuated to did not all stand up to its force. Many of these shelters were destroyed and people died there as well. People feared that the death toll would be upwards of around 10,000 people. So far, the recorded deaths seem to be more around 2,275.

One of the worst-hit cities in the Philippines was Tacloban, where a 16-foot-high wall of ocean water slammed down and decimated everything in the city. In total, across the whole country, about 80,000 homes had been, leaving 582,000 people homeless.

The storm itself was disastrous, but there are several other factors and consequences of this storm that contributed to the death toll, the wall of water that came afterward being one of them. It came suddenly, and people got swept off their feet and washed away in the powerful waves. Then, with this wall of water, came debris. Debris of all kinds came rushing in, killing many in their wake. Once the waters receded all this debris sat in piles and piles and piles, and people were indeed trapped. In Talcoban alone, they found 100 bodies.

However, the death toll could keep climbing due to lack of food and water. People who survived the initial storm and its immediate aftermath could end up dying from dehydration and starvation. Relief and aid organizations are doing what they can, but there have been several delays. According to my sources, a lot of the aid supplies are in the country, but are unable to reach the areas that need it most simply because of the destruction Haiyan caused. Vehicles can’t get to the areas because roads have been destroyed and the ones that weren't are blocked by debris. For most places, it now takes 10 hours for relief agencies to get there.

There are several other health concerns that organizations have to try to address. There are expectant mothers who need care for themselves and their soon-to-arrive children, people with conditions such as heart disease need medication. Water could be contaminated and lead to infectious diseases. Unsanitary conditions could lead to cholera. An epidemic is a real concern for the living in the Philippines right now.

Health isn’t the only issue either. There is news of looting of places like damaged grocery stores occurring in people’s desperation to find food and water, and in one instance, a rice warehouse got stormed by crowds and a wall collapsed, killing eight people.

Politics also plays a role. Reports say that aid convoys have been attacked by rebels within the Philippines, by members of the New People’s Army, the militant wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Obviously, this doesn't help the problems relief organizations are already having with getting supplies to the affected communities.

Hopefully, ways can soon be found to more quickly, effectively, and safely transport supplies and give the aid needed to all those in the Philippines that find themselves without water, or food, or shelter. Hopefully, we can get people back on their feet, and return the Philippines to some level of normalcy in the near future.

Sources and other Resources 

CNN Talks about the Struggle to Survive

CNN Discusses "What if Typhoon Haiyan had hit the US?"

CNN Tracks Haiyan's Havoc

BBC News and the Health Challenges of Haiyan

BBC News Answers Common Questions about Disaster Management and Aid after Haiyan

BBC News Compares Aeiral Shots of the Philippines Before and After the Storm

NBC News Talks about the Future of Super Typhoons

The Telegraph Reports on Gun Culture in the Philippines and how it has hindered relief efforts

The Telegraph article about aid convoys coming under attack