Supertyfoon Haiyan (cat.5) treft de Filipijnen: Duizenden doden

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Op zaterdag 9 november 2013 18:34 schreef aloa het volgende:

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Komt nog eentje achteraan. Waarschijnlijk een stuk minder krachtig.

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Op zaterdag 9 november 2013 18:43 schreef Frutsel het volgende:

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mooi om te zien hoe al het warme water letterlijk wordt weggezogen

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Op zaterdag 9 november 2013 18:29 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
Laten we trouwens hopen dat er niet binnen een week of twee nog zon kreng over dat land raast

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Op zaterdag 9 november 2013 18:43 schreef Frutsel het volgende:

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mooi om te zien hoe al het warme water letterlijk wordt weggezogen

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Typhoon Haiyan: at least 10,000 reportedly dead in Philippine province
Estimated death toll soars as path of destruction leaves many parts of Philippines inaccessible to government and aid officials

At least 10,000 people are thought to have died in the central Philippine province of Leyte after Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall, lashed the area, swallowing coastal towns, a senior police official said early on Sunday morning.

About 70-80% of the buildings in the area in the path of Haiyan in Leyte province was destroyed, said chief superintendent Elmer Soria. "We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said based on their estimate, 10,000 died," he said.

The super-typhoon made landfall on Samar and Leyte islands in the eastern Visayas at about 4.40am on Friday local time, with winds up to 315km/h (195mph) tearing roofs off buildings, turning roads into rivers full of debris and knocking out electricity pylons.

With many provinces left without power or telecommunications, and airports in the hardest-hit areas, such as Tacloban in Leyte province, in tatters, experts say it is impossible to know the extent of the storm's damage – or deliver badly needed aid. Roughly 12 hours after the 600km (370-mile)-wide Haiyan blew west towards Vietnam, where it is expected to make landfall early Sunday, officials and aid workers are only now beginning to piece together details on the number of dead and injured.

The Philippine Red Cross estimates that more than 1,000 people were killed in Tacloban alone, where bodies have been found "piled up around the roads" and in churches – with government figures showing that more than 4 million have been directly affected. The World Food Programme has mobilised some $2m (£1.25m) in aid and aims to deliver 40 tonnes of fortified biscuits to victims within the next few days.

Satellite images show normally green patches of vegetation ripped up into brown squares of debris in Tacloban, where local TV channel GMA broadcast images of huge storm surges, flattened buildings and families traipsing through flooded streets with their possessions held high above the water.

The head of the UN Disaster Assessment Co-ordination Team, Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, described "destruction on a massive scale" in the city of 220,000 and said: "The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami. There are cars thrown like tumbleweed and the streets are strewn with debris."

Al-Jazeera correspondent Jamela Alindogan was trapped in her hotel as the eye of the storm passed overhead and ripped the roof off the building. Evoking scenes of chaos as badly hurt victims wandered the streets without medicine, food or water, and doctors at the local hospital attended to the wounded in the dark without electricity or candlelight, she said: "There is no food, not even in the hotels, and there's no water. The situation is really very desperate."

Other sources told of victims trying to climb out from under rubble to find assistance, and mobs rampaging through the streets looking for food, water or medicine, and looting electrical goods and groceries from malls. "Almost all the houses were destroyed," said Major Rey Balido of the Philippines national disaster agency. "Only a few are left standing."

Relatives of those living in the typhoon's path have had no news from their loved ones and are nervously waiting until power is restored to the area. "I spoke to my mother just a few hours before the typhoon made landfall in my city, Tacloban," said taxi driver Sherwin Martinata, 32, in the capital, Manila. "She was saying she was all right but now I have no idea if my family is safe. There is no power, no phones. I can't get through at all. I'm worried, but I'm powerless."

Those living in the hardest-hit areas, such as the eastern Visayas, are among the poorest in the Philippines, say aid agencies, who warn that there will be little or no savings for many of the victims to fall back on – putting an already vulnerable population at even greater risk of future food and job insecurity.

On Bohol island – where a 7.3-magnitude earthquake toppled colonial-era churches and killed some 200 people last month – residents were successfully evacuated ahead of the storm and as a result many lives were probably saved, said Mathias Eick of the European commission's humanitarian aid department (Echo). However, because the island's main power supply comes from neighbouring Leyte, residents are still without electricity or water.

In Tacloban, where many residents live along the coast, the sheer force of the storm was just too much for the buildings to withstand, with evacuation centres such as stadiums and churches later collapsing. "The sheer magnitude and scale of the disaster sort of overpowered all the contingency measures, and we're fearing that we'll be finding more dead bodies in those evacuation centres themselves," said Alwynn Javier of Christian Aid.

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Op zondag 10 november 2013 02:56 schreef El_jefe07 het volgende:

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Meer op http://www.theguardian.co(...)nds-dead-philippines

Wat dus al werd gevreesd. Zal nog wel meer worden ook denk ik.

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Op zondag 10 november 2013 09:41 schreef PowerPants het volgende:
Mijn moeder is op dit moment in Leyte waar we een huisje hebben staan. Heb na 3 dagen eindelijk vanochtend een smsje gekregen dat ze ok is. Ze hebben alleen geen elektriciteit. Maar ben blij dat het goed gaat.