10,000 feared dead in Philippines typhoon

[Buckaroo]

Worse. Fuck it, there is no god. Or if there is, he/she is a cunt. Unless of course god is trying to teach us something by this kind of nonsense. That's the line I think, isn't it?

 

[Yelkcub]

Worse. Fuck it, there is no god. Or if there is, he/she is a cunt. Unless of course god is trying to teach us something by this kind of nonsense. That's the line I think, isn't it?

If you're dim enough, I guess

 

[Buckaroo]

If you're dim enough, I guess

I guess some are.

 

[weltweit]

There was a government worker on the radio earlier saying they had distributed 5,000 blankets, he was saying it as if that was somehow enough, I think the emergency services there will soon be realising that they will need a lot of help, quickly.

 

[Humberto]

Must have been absolutely terrifying, especially as many Filipinos live in slums.

As for God, its hard to fathom isn't it?

 

[Nylock]

apparently that was their 25th major storm this year

Poor fuckers

 

[ice-is-forming]

RED CROSS DONATIONS:11 November 2013

Messages and information
Typhoon Haiyan Appeal

Key messages
· Communities across central Philippines have been devastated and more than 10,000 people are feared dead after one of the most powerful typhoons on record hit the country. Thousands of people have been left without food, water or shelter.
· Australian Red Cross has launched the Typhoon Haiyan Appeal to assist the communities of the Philippines and Vietnam affected by the typhoon. To donate to the appeal, people can go to redcross.org.au
· Philippines Red Cross staff and volunteers are on the ground in the disaster-affected communities, helping people evacuate and providing emergency first aid and relief supplies, such as food, water and shelter.
· Australian Red Cross stands ready to support our colleages in the Philippines. An Australian Red Cross logisitics expert is already travelling to the hardest hit areas, and other aid workers are on standby.

Question and Answers for Red Cross people

1. How can I make a donation to the Tyhoon Haiyan Appeal?
Australian Red Cross launched the Typhoon Haiyan Appeal. You can assist those people affected by making a donation. Donations can be made:
· Online at redcross.org.au or make a donation via credit card by phoning 1800 811 700.
· Over the counter at any branch of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia
· Or sent by mail to:
Typhoon Haiyan Appeal, Australian Red Cross, Supporter Services Centre
GPO Box 2957, Melbourne VIC 8060

2. How is the money raised from the appeal being used?
Funds raised through this appeal will be used to:
· Provide emergency relief, rehabilitation and recovery assistance to communities affected by Typhoon Haiyan (including the Philippines and Vietnam);
· Support water and sanitation, shelter and health initiatives in affected areas;
· Send specialist aid workers to assist in initial assessments, relief, recovery and longer term disaster management operations; and
· Support Red Cross longer term programs and the work of our Red Cross Red Crescent partners in the affected areas.

3. How much is Red Cross taking for administrative costs?
Australian Red Cross will not deduct more than 10% of any donation to the Typhoon Haiyan Appealto cover appeal costs. Should the funds raised exceed the amount required to meet the immediate needs of the people in the affected areas, Australian Red Cross will direct the excess funds to other emergency preparedness and/or program initiatives in the Asia Pacific region.

4. Is my donation tax deductible?
Donations of $2 and over are tax deductible.

5. How else can I help?
Red Cross relies on committed volunteers and donors. You can support Red Cross by:
· giving monthly, leaving a bequest in your will or making a one-off donation by visiting www.redcross.org.au or calling 1800 811 700
· giving blood, visit www.donateblood.com.au

6. Where can I get more information?
On line
Red Cross updates its website with information about our response, and stories from the field. Go to www.redcross.org.au
Twitter messages

Red Cross sends out Twitter and facebook messages periodically. To check go to: www.twitter.com/RedCrossAu and www.facebook.com/AustralianRedCross
Red Cross positioning
Red Cross is a leader in responding to disasters where they occur around the globe. Australian Red Cross, through its links with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) plays a major role in that response.
The Red Cross Red Crescent Movement is assisting thousands of people affected by Typhoon Haiyan. Support for affected people includes food relief, water and shelter. Local and international Red Cross staff and volunteers are providing relief in the most needed areas. With a network of volunteers in 188 countries around the world, Red Cross is able to respond moments after disasters occur. Australian Red Cross is on standby to provide assistance as required.

Media queries: Joe Cropp 0448 571 484

 

[gosub]

Most DEC agencies are responding with their partners to the humanitarian needs caused by the super storm.

T
yphoon Haiyan devastation: Daanbantayan, Cebu via @TheFreemanNews. Photo by Aldo Banaynal

DEC MEMBERS RESPONDING TO THE STORM INCLUDE:
Save the Children

British Red Cross

World Vision

CAFOD

Christian Aid

Oxfam

Plan UK

CARE International

Age International

ActionAid

Updated 14.30 GMT 09.11.13
Early reports suggest that over four million people have been affected by Typhoon Haiyan - known locally as Yolanda - and in the badly hit coastal city of Tacloban, some estimates suggest more than a thousand people have died and eye witnesses say hardly a single house is still standing.

More than 15 million people live in the areas worst affected by the Typhoon, including in Metro Cebu, the country's second largest city with a population of 2.5 million people. Tacloban is on the coast near where they centre of the storm made landfall and is home to 220,000 people. Many of those in the path of the storm are poor or very poor, making it more likely that their basic homes will be damaged or destroyed and that they will need support to rebuild their lives.

The authorities in the Philippines pre-emptively evacuated nearly 790,000 people and had pre-positioned food packages for nearly 500,000 people. The army and civil authorities are now leading the relief effort with support from the UN and aid agencies.

The DEC is in close contact with its member agencies, many of whom have staff or partners alread responding in the worst affected areas. We will continue to assess the impact of the disaster against our appeal criteria as more information becomes available.

Photo: Tropical Storm Risk

The typhoon has now left Philippines waters but is expected to make landfall in central Vietnam early on Sunday morning (UK time). Vietnamese authorities have begun evacuating 100,000 people living in low lying coastal areas to temporary typhoon shelters on higher ground.

OTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION
WEBSITES

Tropical Storm Risk

Met Office Storm Tracker

UNOCHA Haiyan update

ReliefWeb - Philippines watch page

Philippines National Disaster Council

TWITTER

DEC and all our UK members

Philippine Star newspaper

Sun Star newspaper

Typhoon Haiyan news aggregator

Philippines National Disaster Council

Philippines Red Cross

World Vision Philippines

Plan Asia

 

[Barking_Mad]

Guiuan, Eastern Samar - from what i can tell one of the first places to be struck. This is/was a town of 40,000 people.

 

[Barking_Mad]

An estimated 630,000 people displaced. There's so little left of some of these places and they are relatively so remote that it makes you wonder if they will just be abandoned by anyone who has the ability to make it out.

Here's a video of the storm hitting Guiuan and footage of the aftermath. I think with it being a western facing island town it was spared much of the storm surge. Im presuming most of the damage seen here is caused by the wind.

Click

 

[Crispy]

red cross donated. I encourage all to do so.

 

[gabi]

What link did you use to donate?

 

[Crispy]

What link did you use to donate?

www.redcross.org.uk
they have local sites for all regions, here's yours: http://www.redcross.org.hk/

 

[Lemon Eddy]

red cross donated. I encourage all to do so.

Yeah, just put my beer fund for the next month or so their way.

 

[likesfish]

Poor bastards not as if the Phillippines is without problems without that level of horror.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

That looks horrendous. There's not much that humans build that can stand up to those wind speeds.

 

[Barking_Mad]

It would have been better had it never had to have been written, but a fitting piece of writing to describe the horrors of what these people have been though and are still going through

On a stretch of road on the way into Tacloban city centre, just past a lone white coffin with gold-painted handles, lay a mass of dead, bloated bodies. Men and women, cats, dogs and pigs were piled in a heap against a stone house with a metal roof bent upwards like a question mark.

Its residents stared out at the chaos below like zombies.

"Those are dead people in front of our house, and the smell is awful," called out a woman from the balcony, her face shrouded in cloth to protect her from the stench. "The sister of the dead man came to see her brother, but she couldn't take him away, she just cried.

"What else can she do," the woman asked. "There is nowhere to take him, nothing to do."

An upturned car had been slammed against the woman's house. Broken concrete pipes and pallets of wood had pummelled her front yard and now filled it, along with bits of tyre, mattress, plastic and metal. The corpses, meanwhile, had bloated and burst in the heat, their entrails seeping out, tongues oozing from faces.

The woman on the balcony ran down the stairs to ask for help. Joan Madejas Opiniano, 40, a pretty woman in a floral top who runs an orphanage in eastern Samar province, was breathless as she described the super storm that hit three days ago and obliterated her city. "I started filming the typhoon but within three minutes the water was so strong and so much, it was already up to my ankles," she said, shaking.

"So I tied my son to myself with rope and together we got into a plastic container to float through the waters. Thank God we all survived, but we have to get out of here now. Immediately. We have only three cans of water left to drink and people have started roaming the streets, going into houses to steal things. It has only been three days [since the typhoon hit]. Within two weeks it will be impossible for anyone to survive."

The force of the storm that has flattened much of Leyte island, where Tacloban serves as the provincial capital, is best seen by air. The mountains between Tacloban and Ormoc city, once covered in emerald vegetation, have seen their trees stripped of leaves and now resemble toothpicks stuck into hillsides. Smatterings of houses and villages have been blown to bits, the debris of their homes and farms lying like shards across the earth. As the land levels out into agricultural plains towards the sea, palm trees that once dotted the landscape now lie scattered like sticks.

Random images emerge unscathed from the typhoon's chaos: a two-storey pink building next to a winding brown river, 12 miles inland from Tacloban's coastline; two lone motorcycles passing each other on an empty stretch of highway framed by fallen trees.

At Tacloban's decimated airport, where military planes were busy dropping off much-needed supplies of fuel, water, dried goods and generators, hundreds of survivors waited in queues to leave the chaos. There were sick grandmothers lying prone on airport benches; diabetics with intravenous drips in makeshift wheelchairs fashioned from plastic chairs and carried, not wheeled, by family members; pregnant women and women with toddlers with runny noses.

Among them were pallets of goods – dried food stuffs and supplies. As of Sunday night, over 100,000kg worth of relief had arrived in Tacloban, along with 254 military staff, said Colonel Butch Guevara of the Philippine air force's second air division, which is overseeing search and rescue. Over 1,120 civilians had so far been evacuated to Manila and Cebu, with seemingly thousands more to follow in days to come.

Survivors staggered up and down Tacloban's streets on foot, by motorcycle, in vehicles with blown out windows and windshields, or by rickshaw, often carrying various goods like fuel, water or rice. Many of them beg for supplies. With no power and no communications available in the city, residents are desperate to get the word out to their loved ones that they are safe but in need of supplies.

"Pls. help Lola and Lolo … We are safe. We really nid [sic] ur help...we nid food to survive..." read one note pressed into my hand by 20-something Michelle Salva, dressed in a yellow long-sleeved top with cloth around her face to stop the smell of death permeating the streets. "Thank you for your help, we need you," she said, before turning away.

Everywhere, residents shared tales of survival, loss and humanity. "We were all sleeping when the storm hit, but our cat started meowing so loudly that we all woke up," said Quinn Capacio, 22, as he traipsed through the streets with bottles of water and an umbrella. "The water was already up to our ankles in the house and outside it was waist-high. My whole family huddled together in one room and then the roof blew off. We stayed like that for five hours, huddling and praying. Our cat was almost swept away but we saved her, just like she saved us."

An old woman looking for shoes and money approached and rubbed her stomach with hunger. Capacio reached into his plastic bag and handed her two flattened and oversized flip flops. "Money is useless for me," he said to her sadly. "It doesn't buy you anything because there's nothing to buy." As she wandered away, muttering to herself, more people approached, begging for supplies. "Ma'am, do you have any antibiotics?" asked one man as we passed the lone white-and-gold coffin on the roadside, protected by green netting. "We need food, any kind of food," said another. "What can you give us?"

With little to no relief having yet reached the vast majority of Tacloban's survivors, people have begun taking care of themselves – with a palpable anger at the little they think their government has provided. "There's nothing here – no food, no water, and they don't care," said Edison Tamparia, 30, in basketball shorts and a white slip top. "I had to break into a warehouse to find water but it won't last us two days. People aren't going to survive like this."

Still, among the scenes of devastation, people are trying to get their lives back in order. Families wash clothes and themselves on the side of the road, using water from bore-holes, or cook pasta over open fires cobbled together from wooden debris. Men nail down roofs and women drag piles of mud and rubbish from out of their homes using buckets and rope. Children float on plastic bottles in lakes full of debris, salvaging anything they can use.

"Even though we have nothing – no food, no water, no money – we still make do," said Kennelyn Matobato, 34, as she washed the mud from her clothes and her husband butchered their sole remaining pig on a table by the side of the road. A coffin housing her dead grandmother stood nearby, waiting to be buried.

Still, a terror of further storms to come – exacerbated by a new system that reached the Philippines in the early hours of Monday morning – had thrown some into despair, worrying that their already vulnerable lives would be put even more at risk.

Roughly 44 metric tonnes of food aid are expected to arrive on Tuesday on American military planes on behalf of the World Food Programme, said regional emergencies officer Geoff Pinnock, who added that shipments of rice would soon follow. With blocked roads severely hampering relief efforts, it was necessary for routes to be cleared before aid could be more evenly distributed, he added. "This is on a scale of Katrina or the tsunami," he said. "Water is now our highest priority. We need water purification systems immediately as water here normally came from the river, but as the river is full of bodies that's not an option right now."

As the sun began to set in a glow of orange, purples and pinks, two commercial planes made their first landings in Tacloban, filled with passengers looking for loved ones. One man said he had come to find his brother and mother. Another younger looking man in his 30s said he wanted to find his wife. As they crossed the tarmac, a horde of Tacloban residents waited to board the last C-130 plane for Manila, many of them sick and injured. "This is a test from God," said Efren Amarga, 49, a weary man in a green rainjacket with blue-rimmed eyes. "There is nothing left of my house, nothing at all – no walls, no roof, no windows, just mud. My three daughters are missing and I have no idea if they're alive. I just need to get to Manila to get money and medicine for my wife – she has asthma – and then I can come back and start looking for my girls."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/typhoon-haiyan-city-tacloban1

 

[Buckaroo]

And the pictures look stunning don't they, like art, beautiful pictures of destruction. Death.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Heart breaking stories from survivors...this is going to take a massive aid effort...

 

[gabi]

www.redcross.org.uk
they have local sites for all regions, here's yours: http://www.redcross.org.hk/

Thanks. dropped some money in. we had a Filipino friend visiting us for the last few days en route to Manila and then onwards to her village. She left this morning, I hope all is ok for her loved ones.

 

[CyberRose]

There's now a unified Disasters Emergency Committee campaign:
http://www.dec.org.uk/

Does anyone know if the charities that received donations for their individual campaigns before this DEC campaign will now pool that money through this? Not massively important in the grand scheme of things I suppose just wondering

 

[weltweit]

Listened to some stories today about aid materials and personnel stuck in various airfields, unable to get to where they are needed. In one case the airstrip near a disaster area was too short to accept the large aid aircraft and there were no smaller planes available. A crew of Belgian emergency workers with 30 tonnes of supplies were stuck a 45 minute flying time away and instead were considering a 20 hour boat ride.

 

[trashpony]

There's now a unified Disasters Emergency Committee campaign:
http://www.dec.org.uk/

Does anyone know if the charities that received donations for their individual campaigns before this DEC campaign will now pool that money through this? Not massively important in the grand scheme of things I suppose just wondering

I would imagine so. I hope that the government consider the donations that were made to the individual charities as counting to the total that they match. Although why they just don't give £5m in aid without stupid fucking matching I don't know (actually I do but it's too depressing to me to look at)

 

[weltweit]

It seems somehow wrong to have a sane discussion about it, it being such a massive disaster.

 

[Buckaroo]

It seems somehow wrong to have a sane discussion about it, it being such a massive disaster.[/quotewas]

No sanity about it but if a fraction of the war effort was applied to disaster stuff. Disaster capitilism. Naomi Klein, she talks about this shit.

 

[weltweit]

I wonder why no one seems to have predicted the storm surge. It was apparently 15 foot of water (or more) which seems to have killed more people than the wind.

 

[weltweit]

Wonder how long it will take for the American aircraft carrier to get down there.

 

[HST]

Bunged some dosh to the Red Cross and ticked the Gift Aid box. When my mum was dying in a nursing home there was a Philippina nursing assistant who was very kind and caring to her. They're good people. They deserve our help.

 

[19sixtysix]

Yes the Philippine people are looking after loads of people around this world often years between seeing their own families. I can't imagine trying to work with your family somewhere in those dreadful pictures www.dec.org.uk remember tick the gift aid box.

 

[Greebo]

<snip>remember tick the gift aid box.

Unless your annual income is below the tax threshold - this applies to a lot of longterm benefit claimants.