Typhoon Haiyan: Day 3.

On Friday (8/11/13) the Philippines was struck by Typhoon Haiyan which is known locally as Yolanda. As I've said before if this typhoon had originated in the northern hemisphere it would have been classed as a category 7 hurricane. The system that classifies hurricanes only goes up to 5 so meteorologists are currently arguing whether Haiyan should be classified as a "Super-Typhoon" or a "Hyper-Typhoon." Whatever you call it though along with the 2005 Tsunami, the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2012 Japanese earthquake this has been one of those natural disasters that even has seasoned watchers sitting back and simply going "Wow!"

Reaching 50 miles (80km) wide and travelling some 400 miles (640km) across 6 central Filipino islands Typhoon Haiyan brought sustained winds of 195mph (312kmph) and gusts of 285mph (456kmh) along with a 45 foot (14 metre) storm surge that reached within 4 miles (6 km) of the coast. So significant was this flood of sea water that it was enough to drown people trapped in the second stories of buildings. Across Haiyan's 20,000 sq/mile (32,000sq/km) footprint devastation is reported to be at 70-80%. That means that 70-80% of all the homes, hospitals, schools, farmland, sanitation facilities (sewers, water wells etc), electricity pylons and telecommunication masts in the area have been destroyed leaving 10million people (1/8th of the total population) in need of emergency relief.

To their credit the Filipino government's preparation for Haiyan has been excellent. Prior to the typhoon making landfall they took the precaution of evacuating 1 million people out of its path and have made USD5.2 million available for the relief effort which in a country where the average yearly wage is USD1000 is a lot of money. However the sheer scale of the devastation has begun to overwhelm them. For example I think they only have 50 medium lift helicopters and 1 C130 plane available to cover a wide area that is inaccessible by road. Also much of the food aid they had stockpiled is in the form of dried rice and dried noodles. With the storm surge and to be blunt the rotting corpses of the dead contaminating the water supply much of this is going to be worse than useless. As a result as of 11:00 (GMT) today the Filipino government have only managed to bring relief aid to 500,000 people or 5% of those who need it.

This perceived failure by the government has left many of those affected feeling abandoned leading to a collapse of law and order with violence and looting breaking out. Therefore at this point the only solution I can see is for the Filipino government to declare martial law and channel all the relief and rescue efforts through the military with proper civilian oversight of course.

Be under no doubt that over the coming days and weeks I will be bending your ears, twisting your thumbs, arms and any other appendage that comes to hand in an effort to raise money in response to this disaster. However at the moment we are still at the point where we are trying to work out exactly what is needed, where exactly it is needed and how to get it there. So at the moment the main need of the Filipino government is for other governments, especially ones with a presence in the region, to provide it with as many helicopters and STOL aircraft as possible along with the crews needed to fly them.

When the time for fund raising comes in situations like this I cannot recommend the charity ShelterBox http://www.shelterbox.org/ highly enough although I will need to check their specific involvement in this disaster. What ShelterBox do is provide a plastic box. Exactly what this box contains varies on where it is being sent but it usually includes a tent, blankets, water storage and purification equipment, a basic toolkit and cooking utensils although it lacks basic high energy food. The contents of these boxes are all exactly the same and all boxes are exactly the same size. This means that you get fit x number of boxes onto a pallet and x number of pallets onto a plane/helicopter/truck. Therefore it is the quickest and most efficient way of making sure that everybody gets the basics of survival (1.water, 2.shelter, 3.food) as quickly as possible.

Beyond that it is also always a good idea to donate money to the United Nations World Food Program https://www.wfp.org/donate/typhoon-philippines-a

For those of you though who have friends or relatives in the Philippines or are lucky enough to be one of my celebrity readers I've noticed that the Filipino government has designated the Land Bank of the Philippines, Batasan Branch, Quezon City, Account number (3124-0055-81) as their official clearing account for foreign donations. So you can simply walk into your bank and transfer money directly to the very trustworthy Filipino government which will help cut out most of the political b*llshit and inter-charity turf-wars that normally accompany this type of disaster. 


20:25 on 10/11/13 (UK date.)