Typhoon Mangkhut and Hurricane Florence – two major storms, 9,000 miles apart.
Two of the year’s biggest storms (probably!) made landfall this weekend; Hurricane Florence hitting the Carolina’s in the South East United States, and Typhoon Mangkhut sweeping through the Northern Philippines and on to Hong Kong and South East China.
Typhoon Mangkhut has been described as a Super Storm – a Category 5 storm with winds up to 180 mph. It is the 15th storm to have hit the Philippines this year.
There were fears that the storm could repeat the levels of death and destruction seen after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 – Haiyan’s fury affected more than 14 million people across 44 provinces, displacing 4.1 million people, killing more than 6,000 people, and leaving 1,800 missing. In addition, 1.1 million houses were either partially or totally damaged, 33 million coconut trees (a major source of livelihoods) were destroyed, and the livelihoods of 5.9 million workers were disrupted.
Thankfully, it seems as though Typhoon Mangkhut – although nearly as powerful, has not led to the same level of destruction. At the time of writing, 65 people are confirmed dead and a further 43 remain missing. It is estimated that around 250,000 people were evacuated prior to the storm making landfall.
As is often the case after natural disasters, the subsequent rescue and disater relief operation is being severely hampered by blocked roads caused by landslides making it almost impossible to get rescue equipment to areas where its most needed. Sadly, those landslides also appear to have buried dozens of people making it that much slower in being able to to clear them.
The Philippines is no stranger to natural disasters. Not only does it sit on the Pacific Rim Of Fire making it very susceptible to volcanoes and earthquakes, but the country is also ranked at the second most effected in the world by tropical storms. Being a densely populated archipelago of over 7,000 islands, means that the effects of those frequent natural disasters often have a disproportionally heavy impact on its population.
The Philippines is hit by an average of around 20 tropical storms per year and increasing sea temperatures will only increase that number. So it’s hardly surprising that the government invests around 2 percent of its national budget in climate-change adaptation and risk reduction.
So the country takes its situation seriously and is working hard to address the causes of rising sea temperatures, but without a significant global response, the Philippines’ climate change actions and measures are likely to have little impact in isolation.
So prevention measures are clearly vitally important, but countries like the Philippines will never be able to prevent all natural disasters – or even most of them.
Post emergency response planning is therefore equally important – perhaps more important (if we accept that we can never alleviate the causes of most of these natural disasters).
Access to the post storm emergency areas is once again a major problem for the rescue and relief effort. Landslides have blocked roads – the area most heavily effected by Mangkhut is quite remote, and with infrastructure damaged or reduced in capability, getting rescue machinery, medical supplies, food and clean water to the areas is proving difficult. Post incident access problems is a common symptom of large scale natural disasters and is often the cause of further significant loss of life.
Helicopters form the cornerstone of many relief operations, but helicopters aren’t always utilised to their fullest extent.
With robust forward planning – and training where necessary, equipment can be pre-positioned in strategic locations around a country such as the Philippines, which can go some way to address the post incident access problem. Medical supplies, Power Generators, Water Filtration Pumps, Food and Water can very easily be loaded and pre-positioned and then delivered utilising remote point to point helicopter logistics.
Those same delivery methods and equipment can then be used to carry rescue personnel to a position of relative safety, where longer term care and support can be provided.
