Posted on 11/10/2013 6:40:35 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) - Corpses hung from trees, were scattered on sidewalks or buried in flattened buildings - some of the 10,000 people believed killed in one Philippine city alone by ferocious Typhoon Haiyan that washed away homes and buildings with powerful winds and giant waves.
As the scale of devastation became clear Sunday from one of the worst storms ever recorded, officials projected the death toll could climb even higher when emergency crews reach parts of the archipelago cut off by flooding and landslides. Looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water as the government began relief efforts and international aid operations got underway.
Even in a nation regularly beset by earthquakes, volcanoes and tropical storms, Typhoon Haiyan appears to be the deadliest natural disaster on record...
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
The Philippines are mostly Christian, so I doubt Obama feels much need to help them out.
wow
Has the US announced any aid yet? We spend so much on crap, is there anything left?
George Bush doesn’t care about Filipinos.
Dear Lord, I don’t pretend to know why and I don’t understand, so I pray for these people and their souls that they have found peace with You and that those who remain make their peace and rebuild with faith, strength, and courage.
Cue in Al...
This will be really bad
Amen.
my son’s Marine unit was on a float in the pacific when the giant mud slide (’06?) hit the Philippines....bush sent them to help within hours....?
also...it was bush who sent the navy and marines to help after the Tsunami if i remember correctly....
it will be interesting to see what b.o. does....
Water is always looking for a place to go. If you live near water, at some time it is coming where you are and you can’t stop it.
If you live on an island, the water owns you for it surrounds you and you can’t get off that island once the water starts moving. You will get no help until a plane or ship can get there. If you are on the mainland, help can get to you much faster. You risk your life to live on an island where water rules, you don’t.
The article says, “The nation (the Philippines)is in the northwestern Pacific, right in the path of the world’s No. 1 typhoon generator, according to meteorologists. The archipelago’s exposed eastern seaboard often bears the brunt.”
That group of islands, being where they are, is a disaster waiting to happen over and over and over and this one was the worst that has ever happened.
I’ve lived in Hawaii twice and if ships stopped, Hawaii would stop. At least it’s not in the direct path of where typhoons start like the Philippines are.
“Are we sending help?”
You mean obama/FEMA?
For some thoughts on that take a look at the ‘help’ the Sandy victims in NJ got. And take not of how the national press ignored most of their suffering.
Obama would be sending much more than the paltry $100,000 if the destruction had been on the Muslim parts of the islands.
Isn’t Japan in the northwest Pacific? The Philippines are in insular Southeast Asia.
It’s actually hard to tell in many of the photos if the damage was caused by the rapidly advancing storm surge (almost like a tsunami) or by the high winds. In both cases, pretty much everything is knocked flat and piled a meter or so high.
From reading the article, 10,000 is just one island and they know there are thousands more. A logistic question is, what do you do with 10,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 bodies? Try to visualize that many bodies. They need to be dealt with fairly quickly, so what do you do? How long will it take to gather them? How big a trench does it take to bury that many? Burning would be out of the question I think as it’s difficult to burn an entire body unless you have a really hot fire for a period of time.
That is gruesome to think about but any disaster in this country, such as no power for months, would cause more deaths than that. Remember, November 13 and 14, our country will simulate such a disaster. Are they going to include what to do with a massive number of bodies?
There were between 6000 and 10,000 killed in the Galveston storm of 1900. They first gathered up bodies and took them out to sea and dumped them. When the tide brought them back to the beach, they piled them up and burned them. My grandfather, a 21 year old carpenter, was part of the crew who had to do the dirty work.
One of the witnesses said the water was as high as a tall coconut tree. And, reading that article, people drowned because the water was so strong, they had no control of where the water sent them. A fella who was in the water said people were washed away and he couldn’t do anything about it because he was trying to save himself.
So, it was a combination of drowning or getting killed by falling debris. I’ve looked at a lot of pictures of those scenes and bodies are in the streets under debris and you know those living people were hunkered down somewhere and not in the streets.
“For some thoughts on that take a look at the ‘help’ the Sandy victims in NJ got.”
The response to that really surprised me - I thought Hussein would be on top of that one and it was awful what the people went through with no help coming for days after days. You were risking your life to stay in your still there but damaged house as the lawless were everywhere taking whatever they found.
I would have left before it got there because they were too exposed, too close to the water, but those people don’t live in hurricane country that often. I’m not going to get water but when one is coming through, there is no telling what the wind will do, like rip off my roof, something like that, and I prepare for that. Those people in New Jersey and other places were sitting ducks. People here on the coast, like Galveston, know to leave.
Think about all the debris that’s in that water, probably not much left of a good number of bodies.
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