How com the Phillipines were so unprepared?

[Blind groper]

The reason for lack of preparedness is poverty. When you got nothing, you cannot really prepare for such disasters.

If I were living in the Philippines, I would build a reinforced concrete house, shaped aerodynamically, to shake off the worst force 5 hurricane. But, by their standards, I am rich.

The reality is that they build shacks out of rubbish they pick up from wherever they can get it. When a 200 mph gust hits such a shack, the shack disappears.

On storing water and rice, yeah sure, a lot of people do. But the disaster was so bad that a big part of that also disappeared during the storm. In Tacloban, the main source of food and water after the event were the few supermarkets, which were thoroughly looted. If you saw people on TV carrying sacks of rice, that was it. Those who hit the supermarkets first got the food. Others starve.

[mistermack]

The reason for lack of preparedness is poverty. When you got nothing, you cannot really prepare for such disasters.

You seem to have a strange vision of the Philippines. An entire country where people have nothing.
It doesn't match the pictures I've seen. Modern cars and motorbikes etc. You seem to be talking about the tv pictures of slums in Manila. That's not true of the whole country. My next door neighbour is married to a Filippino woman. I don't think she would recognise your description.
It's not a wealthy country, but it's not full of people with nothing either.

The reality is that they build shacks out of rubbish they pick up from wherever they can get it. When a 200 mph gust hits such a shack, the shack disappears.

Well, that's what homes in the US look like, when a tornado has passed through. It all looks like matchwood to me.
But looking at the tv pictures, the houses in the Philippines are mostly missing their roofs, but are otherwise still there. It's a mixture. The cameras always find the very worst bits to show you.
I remember when Gloucester flooded. On the national news, you would think we were all in six feet of water. But driving around Gloucester, you couldn't find any flooding. The camera crews went to the worst bits, which were areas that ALWAYS flood.

I noticed from the arial shots, that the churches look undamaged. Ok for some.

In Tacloban, the main source of food and water after the event were the few supermarkets, which were thoroughly looted. If you saw people on TV carrying sacks of rice, that was it.

No it wasn't. It was aid. The reporter made that clear. How many supermarkets do you know, who sell fifty-kilo sacks of rice and noodles?
Yes, A few supermarkets got ransacked. That would happen in London or Chicago or LA. Nothing odd in that. But it's just typical news media, they always focus on the exceptional, and give the false impression that the whole country is like that.

You seem to be concocting a picture in your own head and your own pre-concieved notions.
Yes, there are large numbers of people who need aid. But that's in a nation of nearly a hundred million people.
Most people are ok.

[pErvinalia]

Speaking about eating dog..

Dunno what yer gettin' at there.

[pErvinalia]

Interestingly, the europeans on the site generally said that they drank the tap water with no problems, but the locals don't drink it.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/t ... ID=2356172

The Europeans are probably vaccinated.

[Blind groper]

To mistermack

You obviously don't know this, but I just got back from a 12 day stay in the Philippines. What I was describing I saw with my own eyes. And Manilla is probably wealthier than most of the country. Yet in Manilla, something like 10,000 people sleep in the open, unprotected, on the verge of the street each night, because they cannot even claim a scrap of land to build a shanty.

There are 90 million people in the Philippines, on a series of islands, none enormously big. Certainly there are cars and motorbikes. There are even mansions. However, most people own very little and scrape up a bare living. As for 50 lb bags of rice. Do you not realise that most Filipinos live on rice, rice and more rice. Rice is so depended on that each year tens of thousands of children die of vitamin A deficiency, since they consume almost nothing but rice. So yes, a Philippine supermarket stocks bags of rice of all sizes, in enormous quantity.

[pErvinalia]

The reason for lack of preparedness is poverty. When you got nothing, you cannot really prepare for such disasters.

You seem to have a strange vision of the Philippines. An entire country where people have nothing.
It doesn't match the pictures I've seen. Modern cars and motorbikes etc. You seem to be talking about the tv pictures of slums in Manila. That's not true of the whole country. My next door neighbour is married to a Filippino woman. I don't think she would recognise your description.
It's not a wealthy country, but it's not full of people with nothing either.

What you don't seem to understand is that it's mainly the poor people, like those who live in slums etc, who get disproportionately smashed by these storms.

In Tacloban, the main source of food and water after the event were the few supermarkets, which were thoroughly looted. If you saw people on TV carrying sacks of rice, that was it.

No it wasn't. It was aid. The reporter made that clear. How many supermarkets do you know, who sell fifty-kilo sacks of rice and noodles?

You lead a sheltered life. Staples like that in SE Asia DO come in 50kg sacks.

[Tyrannical]

It's not the poverty, you have to dig a little deeper and realize why they are impoverished.

[pErvinalia]

Yes of course we do, Hitler.

[pErvinalia]

Before and after shots: http://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/typ ... ore-after/

[pErvinalia]

And here you go, Lak. According to this, Haiyan crapped on the others for wind speed. Gusts up to 370km/h.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-08/t ... on/5080096

[Blind groper]

To Tyrannical

The reason for the poverty.

Number 1 reason is simply a very, very, very corrupt set of successive governments. We have all heard of Ferdinand Marcos, and his shoe loving wife, Imelda. Well, they stole billions of dollars off the Philippine people and salted them away in Swiss banks. Nor were they the only ones. I spoke to an educated Filipino guy 6 weeks ago and asked him about this. He said the current president is the first non corrupt one they have ever had, but he can do little because every other damn person in their government is frantically sticking his hand in the till to scoop up all the graft he can get.

[Warren Dew]

To Tyrannical

The reason for the poverty.

Number 1 reason is simply a very, very, very corrupt set of successive governments. We have all heard of Ferdinand Marcos, and his shoe loving wife, Imelda. Well, they stole billions of dollars off the Philippine people and salted them away in Swiss banks. Nor were they the only ones. I spoke to an educated Filipino guy 6 weeks ago and asked him about this. He said the current president is the first non corrupt one they have ever had, but he can do little because every other damn person in their government is frantically sticking his hand in the till to scoop up all the graft he can get.

Well, at least you agree with him that it's not the poverty.

[piscator]

I feel sorry for the people. But I don't understand how people aren't more ready, when they know that a huge storm is going to hit them.
The Phillipines get about twenty typhoons every year. And it's obvious that it's possible that a big one will come.
If I was living there, I would at the minimum have some drinking water stored. How hard can that be?

I like spring water, and I keep up to seven 25 litre containers full of spring water in my garage at any one time. I get it free from the famous Malvern springs.
Large plastic containers are used all over the world, how hard would it be to dig a few into your garden, if a storm was brewing? You could easily store enough drinking water for a few months. And much the same applies to food.
You could bury some plastic sacks of rice, and some tins. And you know that there will be plenty of firewood around after a big storm.
I know I don't live there, but I know what I would have done, if a huge storm was coming.

To start, someone drew a circle around about a thousand islands with 350 different cultures and called it, "The Philippines". There's no sense of nationhood or national cohesion as you understand it. This leads to a delightful 3rd World Libertarian state of building codes, so there're great swaths of the Philippine population who live in tin and plywood shacks and have no fucking clue what a garden is, much less have enough land to have one.
Secondly, when 160mph winds and 25' of storm surge leave nothing of your village but twisted fused masses of storm debris and dead animals, it's not going to be so easy to find where your gardener buried the drinking water and fois gras.
Thirdly, emergency response and civil defense in the Third World are mostly rackets which go to enrich the privileged and corrupt, not something to rely on in case of a disaster. Think: "New Orleans"...
Fourthly, you can only get so much of your shit on a moped or a bicycle, so it's harder to evacuate up a congested pig trail than up I-55 or the M1. Moreover, grandma, the babies, and the potbellied pigs are going to slow everyone down about as much as the ad hoc roadblocks set up by enterprising gangs and soldiers to collect tolls and excise taxes. So evacuations aren't going to be quite so smooth and rapid as one might imagine, nor is the influx of emergency aid...
Fifthly, when all the boats are sunk and all the fields are flooded or under landslides, what few open air markets might be open for business consider the recent calamity to be an opportunity for windfall profits rather than one for service. Food and clean water get fucking expensive in such a veritable paradise of individual initiative.
Sixthly, seventhly, eightly...I think even you may get the point that things are different there.

[Hermit]

I feel sorry for the people. But I don't understand how people aren't more ready, when they know that a huge storm is going to hit them.
The Phillipines get about twenty typhoons every year. And it's obvious that it's possible that a big one will come.
If I was living there, I would at the minimum have some drinking water stored. How hard can that be?

I like spring water, and I keep up to seven 25 litre containers full of spring water in my garage at any one time. I get it free from the famous Malvern springs.
Large plastic containers are used all over the world, how hard would it be to dig a few into your garden, if a storm was brewing? You could easily store enough drinking water for a few months. And much the same applies to food.
You could bury some plastic sacks of rice, and some tins. And you know that there will be plenty of firewood around after a big storm.
I know I don't live there, but I know what I would have done, if a huge storm was coming.

To start, someone drew a circle around about a thousand islands with 350 different cultures and called it, "The Philippines". There's no sense of nationhood or national cohesion as you understand it. This leads to a delightful 3rd World Libertarian state of building codes, so there're great swaths of the Philippine population who live in tin and plywood shacks and have no fucking clue what a garden is, much less have enough land to have one.
Secondly, when 160mph winds and 25' of storm surge leave nothing of your village but twisted fused masses of storm debris and dead animals, it's not going to be so easy to find where your gardener buried the drinking water and fois gras.
Thirdly, emergency response and civil defense in the Third World are mostly rackets which go to enrich the privileged and corrupt, not something to rely on in case of a disaster. Think: "New Orleans"...
Fourthly, you can only get so much of your shit on a moped or a bicycle, so it's harder to evacuate up a congested pig trail than up I-55 or the M1. Moreover, grandma, the babies, and the potbellied pigs are going to slow everyone down about as much as the ad hoc roadblocks set up by enterprising gangs and soldiers to collect tolls and excise taxes. So evacuations aren't going to be quite so smooth and rapid as one might imagine, nor is the influx of emergency aid...
Fifthly, when all the boats are sunk and all the fields are flooded or under landslides, what few open air markets might be open for business consider the recent calamity to be an opportunity for windfall profits rather than one for service. Food and clean water get fucking expensive in such a veritable paradise of individual initiative.
Sixthly, seventhly, eightly...I think even you may get the point that things are different there.

Well said.

[mistermack]

I feel sorry for the people. But I don't understand how people aren't more ready, when they know that a huge storm is going to hit them.
The Phillipines get about twenty typhoons every year. And it's obvious that it's possible that a big one will come.
If I was living there, I would at the minimum have some drinking water stored. How hard can that be?

I like spring water, and I keep up to seven 25 litre containers full of spring water in my garage at any one time. I get it free from the famous Malvern springs.
Large plastic containers are used all over the world, how hard would it be to dig a few into your garden, if a storm was brewing? You could easily store enough drinking water for a few months. And much the same applies to food.
You could bury some plastic sacks of rice, and some tins. And you know that there will be plenty of firewood around after a big storm.
I know I don't live there, but I know what I would have done, if a huge storm was coming.

To start, someone drew a circle around about a thousand islands with 350 different cultures and called it, "The Philippines". There's no sense of nationhood or national cohesion as you understand it. This leads to a delightful 3rd World Libertarian state of building codes, so there're great swaths of the Philippine population who live in tin and plywood shacks and have no fucking clue what a garden is, much less have enough land to have one.
Secondly, when 160mph winds and 25' of storm surge leave nothing of your village but twisted fused masses of storm debris and dead animals, it's not going to be so easy to find where your gardener buried the drinking water and fois gras.
Thirdly, emergency response and civil defense in the Third World are mostly rackets which go to enrich the privileged and corrupt, not something to rely on in case of a disaster. Think: "New Orleans"...
Fourthly, you can only get so much of your shit on a moped or a bicycle, so it's harder to evacuate up a congested pig trail than up I-55 or the M1. Moreover, grandma, the babies, and the potbellied pigs are going to slow everyone down about as much as the ad hoc roadblocks set up by enterprising gangs and soldiers to collect tolls and excise taxes. So evacuations aren't going to be quite so smooth and rapid as one might imagine, nor is the influx of emergency aid...
Fifthly, when all the boats are sunk and all the fields are flooded or under landslides, what few open air markets might be open for business consider the recent calamity to be an opportunity for windfall profits rather than one for service. Food and clean water get fucking expensive in such a veritable paradise of individual initiative.
Sixthly, seventhly, eightly...I think even you may get the point that things are different there.

I wish people would just post about what they know, and not invent shit like this.
It's too pathetic to go through. The post is sheer bollocks from beginning to end.
I'm just posting on what I've seen, and that's people going through the wreckage of their homes, and putting roofs back on etc. And people with gardens. And reporters walking around on dry land, saying that SOME areas still have a foot of water.
Vitually everybody I've seen could easily have had food and water safely stored, and I'm sure many of them did.