Tuesday 9 December 2014

Typhoon Hagupit leaves at least 21 dead, disaster preparedness saves lives


At least 21 people were killed by the storm, the Red Cross said, with the eastern island of Samar worst hit, but it caused far less damage than feared.

Thousands of people are heading home after about a million people were evacuated from vulnerable areas.

The city of Tacloban, which bore the brunt of Super Typhoon Haiyan last year, has emerged relatively unscathed.

Albay province, which evacuated more than half its population, has called for those people to go home.

After spending three days at a school in Polangi, families are packing into small military trucks, holding one or two plastic bags with the essentials they brought with them.

They worry about the state in which they'll find their homes but many are most worried about their rice fields, their only source of income.

One woman reached her house and found it flooded and uninhabitable. For her that means at least one more night in the evacuation centre.

Hagupit has been nowhere near as powerful as Typhoon Haiyan - known as Yolanda in the Philippines - which tore through the central Philippines in November 2013, leaving more than 7,000 dead or missing.

In Tacloban, Hagupit blew away roofs and flooded streets, but the area has escaped the wider devastation of last year.

"There were no bodies scattered on the road, no big mounds of debris," local woman Rhea Estuna told the Associated Press by phone from Tacloban. "Thanks to God this typhoon wasn't as violent."

Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez told the BBC that the immediate task was assessing damage to the temporary shelters in which some people have been living.

He said that the weather was good now but that high tides were making it harder for waterways to drain, despite work to clear debris.

UN official Orla Fagan told Reuters that a lot of people have begun returning to their homes. "In Tacloban this morning, the sun is shining, people just started going back," she said.

The storm made its fourth landfall on Monday night, hitting Batangas province some 100km (60 miles) south of Manila with winds of roughly 100km/h.

At its height, as it approached land on Saturday, gusts of up to 250km/h were recorded.



Lessons learnt help Philippines avoid high death toll

As Typhoon Hagupit churned across the Philippines on Sunday, residents of the eastern part of the island nation expressed relief that they had joined the hundreds of thousands who had evacuated to safer ground.

Ms Eleanor Llaneta, 60, decided to follow the advice of her neighbourhood captain and leave her home in Albay province, on the south-eastern tip of Luzon Island, on Friday, more than a day before Typhoon Hagupit made landfall.

In past years, she might have considered staying put, but a year’s worth of news about the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing after hitting the Philippines in November 2013, convinced her that prudence was the best course. “We only knew about storm surges after Tacloban,” said Ms Llaneta, referring to the city that Haiyan left filled with mud, debris and dead bodies just over one year ago.

Typhoon Hagupit weakened into a tropical storm on Monday, leaving at least 21 people dead, and forcing more than a million people into shelters, but sparing most of the central Philippine region still haunted by last year’s monster storm.

While the worst was over in central island provinces, where the sun peeked out yesterday after days of stormy weather, Manila and outlying provinces braced themselves as Hagupit blew nearer with maximum sustained winds of 105kmh and gusts of 135kmh.

Forecasters said the storm was expected to slam into a Batangas provincial town about 110km south of Manila by nightfall. Although considerably weaker from its peak power, the storm remains potentially dangerous and could still whip storm surges that could overwhelm coastal villages, they said.

In Albay province, Ms Llaneta and about 560,000 others were evacuated ahead of the storm, said local officials. As of 4am on Sunday, more than 1.2 million people had been evacuated nationwide, Ms Gwendolyn Pang, secretary-general of the Philippine Red Cross, wrote on Facebook.




Hagupit is expected to hopscotch across islands as it makes its way west. Maximum sustained winds near the centre had dropped to about 160kmh by Sunday morning, but the slow churn over the nation could dump large amounts of rain, setting off floods and mudslides.

The Mayon volcano rises over Albay, adding a further risk of landslides to the wind, floods and storm surges that often follow typhoons. In 2006, Typhoon Durian dumped heavy rain on the area, setting off mudslides that buried villages below Mayon and killing more than 1,000 people.

One significant development in disaster preparedness in the Philippines is a much wider knowledge of the threat from storm surges, the walls of water pulled along by typhoons that can quickly flood low-lying coastal areas. In Tacloban last year, a wall of water from Typhoon Haiyan ripped across a peninsular neighbourhood known as San Jose, crumpling cement houses and causing many deaths.

An assessment of that disaster by a German government-funded sustainable development agency said many residents in Tacloban, where the storm surge was the cause of most of the fatalities, had not been familiar with the risks and did not evacuate. “Serious warnings and more effective evacuations along the coastline could have saved many lives,” the report said.

In the year since Haiyan, residents have been exposed to much more discussion about the risks of typhoons, and evacuees in the city of Legazpi said that had contributed to their willingness to leave their homes.

Tuesday 9 December 2014

http://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/lessons-learnt-help-philippines-avoid-high-death-toll-typhoon

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-30370012

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Remembering the 2004 tsunami in Banda Aceh


Ten years after a tsunami hit this city on Dec. 26, 2004, killing 167,000 people, roads and bridges have been rebuilt, there are houses on the beach, trees have grown back, and the millions of tons of debris that covered the island are gone. But for a first-time visitor, reminders of the disaster seem to be everywhere.

A sculpture of a giant wave marks Lambaro, one of four mass gravesites, where 46,000 bodies are buried. A hotel front desk displays a photo of smashed boats filling its parking lot. The dome of a mosque — torn off its building a mile (1.6 kilometers) away — rests in an emerald-green rice field.

Water streams down the cave-like walls of the Tsunami Museum, which serves as both a memorial and evacuation site, with a knoll on high ground offering refuge in case another tsunami strikes. The center of the museum is an atrium that rises above a park, decorated with the word "Peace" and the flags of countries that provided assistance. Exhibits explain how the community worked together to rebuild, and how the once-embattled province even found ways to make peace after the disaster, with rebels in a long and bloody separatist fight signing a deal with the central government.

Almost everyone in Banda Aceh has a story to share. Dara Umarra and her neighbors have in their yards two wrecked boats that came to rest there after the storm. Visitors can climb in one boat, but it's tilted at a steep angle. I couldn't position myself squarely on the ladder and as I dangled from the rungs, I wondered what it was like trying to cling to anything stable to survive the waves.

A massive, 2,500-ton steel barge that housed a floating diesel power generator, the Apung 1, was carried 5 kilometers (3 miles) inland. Walkways and five flights of stairs leading to a viewing tower allow visitors to appreciate its sheer bulk. A monument outside the barge honors victims from the immediate area. A copper-colored sculpture, symbolizing the height and color of the massive waves, surrounds a clock tower where time is stopped just before 8 a.m., the moment when the earthquake struck, unleashing the tsunami.

One of the most-visited sites is a long fishing boat that crashed on top of a house. A ramp leads to the roof, and you can also walk underneath where it's wedged between two dwellings. The boat provided a refuge for 56 survivors.

..View gallery In this Aug. 11, 2014 photo, Dara Umarra, left, and her boyfriend, Septian talk outside Umarra's …Some memorials include photo galleries of the destruction and recovery. They do not attempt to sanitize. Mixed in with photos of debris and rebuilding are graphic images of human suffering.

The Baiturrahman Grand Mosque, with its 35-meter (115-foot) minaret, pearly white walls and seven majestic black domes, survived the tsunami largely unscathed, with hundreds of locals taking refuge there. Visitors can wander through the mosque's pillars and admire the chandeliers, marble floors and architecture. It's beautifully lit at night, and Friday prayers offer a colorful experience. Be aware that the province has implemented a version of sharia or Islamic law, and visitors to the mosque must cover up. Sarongs can be borrowed by those who come unprepared.

While residents tolerate tourists in shorts elsewhere, modest clothing covering legs and shoulders is more socially acceptable. Local women are veiled and dress conservatively. Lumpuuk, a few kilometers (miles) to the south of Banda Aceh, is known for its beaches, but if you're planning on swimming in a bikini, it's best to stick to the area near the cliffside bungalows where most of the tourists congregate.

A short ferry ride from Banda Aceh to the north is the island of Pulah Weh, or Sabang. It's legendary among in-the-know divers, and non-divers can enjoy snorkeling, fishing, hiking and views from hotel balconies. Prices are moderate by Western standards: A spacious upscale bungalow with water view at Casa Nemo is less than $40 a night. The nicest beach near the port is Sumur Tiga, about 20 minutes away, and much of the island is ringed by easily accessible coral reefs. The closest thing to a typical beach town is Ipoih, an hour from port. Sharia law bans alcohol, but some restaurants and beach hotels geared toward tourists quietly sell beer. Organized tourist activities — such as water excursions — come to a halt Friday mornings for the Muslim holy day.

While all the tsunami sites are somber reminders of one of the worst natural disasters in modern history, visitors cannot help but feel Aceh's resilience. A multi-billion dollar reconstruction effort, widely considered a success, has left the province in many ways better off than others in Indonesia, which remains a poor country despite sustained economic growth over the last 10 years. A huge tower inside the museum is engraved with just a few names of the dead, but the dark funnel reaches up to the bright sky.

Tuesday 9 December 2014

http://news.yahoo.com/remembering-2004-tsunami-banda-aceh-154040787.html

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Six killed as private jet crashes on Maryland home


A private jet has crashed into a house in a suburb of Washington DC, killing three people on board and three on the ground, fire officials say.

The small plane came down in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on Monday, setting two other homes on fire.

Witnesses told local media that the plane seemed to be struggling to maintain altitude before it crashed.

A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said the jet was trying to land at a nearby airfield.

The Embraer Phenom 100 twin-engine plane crashed about one mile (1.6km) from the Montgomery County Airpark, Montgomery county fire department spokesman Pete Piringer told reporters.

A mother and two children in the home hit by the plane who were initially reported as missing have now been confirmed as dead, officials said.

The house was nearly completely destroyed. The two other homes also had significant damage.

Neighbour Fred Pedreira told the Associated Press he had seen the plane coming down.

"He was 90 degrees - sideways - and then he went belly-up into the house and it was a ball of fire," he said.

Tuesday 9 December 2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30383922

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