Such mass efforts, which took place even as some typhoon evacuation centers were being used to house coronavirus patients, surely saved lives. That catastrophic storm destroyed or severely damaged more than four million homes, and the widespread looting that followed it devastated the university city of Tacloban. Yee said.Īfter Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful tropical storms on record, churned across the Philippines in 2013, killing more than 6,300 people, local governments began drawing up better evacuation plans. Still, the country has honed a resilient national character as it confronts disaster after disaster, Mr. Yee, a sociologist at the University of the Philippines Visayas Tacloban College

“Climate change is a big international idea, but we are facing this on the local level and we aren’t equipped with enough progressive vision for it,” said Dakila Kim P. The Asian Development Bank says that more than 23,000 people in the Philippines died from natural hazards from 1997 to 2016 as the warming planet brought more powerful storms. Mass deforestation, including the destruction of mangroves along the coastlines, has torn away natural barriers to wind and water. “But we are one with the people of the Bicol region, who bore the brunt of the storm.” “Thanks be to God we were largely spared,” said Francisco Domagoso, Manila’s mayor. Rivers overflowed, tree branches flew and wet concrete-like mudflows poured down the slopes of a volcano.

At least 16 people were confirmed to have died from the typhoon in the Bicol region southeast of the capital, according to the regional Office of Civil Defense, with three people reported missing. Roughly 1.5 million families in the city live near railroad tracks, garbage dumps and fetid waterways, their flimsy shacks and shantytowns defenseless against every wind gust and storm surge.īut by day’s end, Goni, known locally as Rolly, appeared to have largely bypassed the capital, with no fatalities reported there. Manila, the low-lying, crowded capital, looked to be squarely in the typhoon’s path.

When Typhoon Goni made landfall in the disaster-plagued nation on Sunday morning, with sustained winds of 135 miles per hour, it ranked as the most powerful storm to hit the Southeast Asian nation in years. BANGKOK - The Philippines was braced for the worst.

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