Response to Typhoon in Philippines Shows Lessons Learned From a Year Ago  - NYTimes.comResponse to Typhoon in Philippines Shows Lessons Learned From a Year Ago  - NYTimes.com






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Asia Pacific |​​NYT Now

Response to Typhoon in Philippines Shows Lessons Learned From a Year Ago 

By AUSTIN RAMZYDEC. 7, 2014
 
Inside








Photo






Residents waded through floodwaters on Sunday in Borongan City, the Philippines. Typhoon Hagupit is expected to churn over the country until Wednesday.

Credit
            Francis R. Malasig/European Pressphoto Agency        



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LEGAZPI, the Philippines —  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.Eleanor Llaneta, 60, decided to follow the advice of her neighborhood captain and leave her home in Albay Province, on the southeastern 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. 

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                            Related Coverage
                    










Philippines Pushes Developing Countries to Cut Their Emissions DEC. 8, 2014












Typhoon Lashes Philippines, Amid Fears of a Repeat of Last Year’s Devastation DEC. 6, 2014







By late Sunday, what had been classified as a super typhoon was far weaker than Haiyan was when it hit, and was continuing to weaken. The storm, which is expected to push its way across the country until Wednesday, was generating strong winds and rain, but the overall effect was not as devastating as worst-case scenarios had anticipated.
Photo






Motorists made their way through fallen trees on Sunday after Typhoon Hagupit hit Samar island in the Philippines.

Credit
            Francis R. Malasig/European Pressphoto Agency        


The government announced Sunday evening that at least three people were confirmed to have been killed by the storm, including a 1-year-old girl and a 65-year-old man who both died of hypothermia in the central province of Iloilo.  The president’s office said “reports of a few casualties have unfortunately been received” from the town of Dolores, where the storm first made landfall, but the full toll there was not clear.In Albay Province, Ms. Llaneta and about 560,000 others were evacuated ahead of the storm, according to local officials. As of 4 a.m. Sunday more than 1.2 million people had been evacuated nationwide, Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, wrote on Facebook.
Photo






Residents in Legazpi, the Philippines, protect themselves from the rain and heavy winds of Typhoon Hagupit on Sunday.

Credit
            Aaron Favila/Associated Press        


Hagupit is expected to hopscotch across islands as it makes its way west. Maximum sustained winds near the center had dropped to about 100 miles an hour by Sunday morning, but the slow churn over the nation could dump large amounts of rain, setting off floods and mudslides.With full assessments of damaged areas far from finished, the government is not ready to declare success publicly in riding out the storm. Still, officials and aid workers sounded notes of optimism that darker predictions of the storm’s destructiveness would not materialize.
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            Typhoon Hagupit        














LAOS


CHINA


PHILIPPINES


Pacific Ocean


THAILAND


Manila


Path of
Typhoon
Hagupit


Projected path


Legazpi


CAMBODIA


VIETNAM


Ho Chi Minh City


Tacloban


Cebu City


Gulf of
Thailand


South China Sea


Sulu Sea


MALAYSIA


BRUNEI


MALAYSIA


200 Miles






 


            United States Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center        


“The picture looks O.K. so far in the daylight,” said Kate Marshall, a spokeswoman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. “But we still don’t know what happens when the typhoon moves northwest.”Nearly a day after Hagupit hit, Albay had yet to record a storm-related death or serious injury, said Jukes Nunez, an Albay special operations officer. “Disaster preparedness, we want to make it part of daily life, just like brushing your teeth,” Mr. Nunez said. “We are one of the most vulnerable areas in the Philippines.”
Photo






Families prepare to return to their homes from an evacuation center in Legazpi, the Philippines.

Credit
            Jes Aznar for The New York Times        


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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 here 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 neighborhood 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 that 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.“We were hearing all of this news on the radio about storm surges,” said Maria Ampo, 46, who weathered the storm in a classroom in Bagumbayan Elementary School along with more than 30 people ranging in age from a month to 82 years old. “That’s why now we’re worried about it.”The evacuation of so many people is an impressive step in preparedness here, Ms. Marshall said. “A million people evacuated — that’s pretty huge for a country like the Philippines,” she said. “Even so, we’re waiting to see what happens next. We’re not out of the woods yet.”


A version of this article appears in print on December 8, 2014, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Response to Typhoon in Philippines Shows Lessons Learned From a Year Ago.  Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe









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