The region has been beset by military clashes for more than four decades, and Bopha hit just as hope appeared on the horizon. In October , the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front reached a framework agreement, setting the stage for a new basic law for the region. More than 1, people died and close to , homes were destroyed or severely damaged when sustained winds in excess of mph hit the island of Mindanao.
In all, over 6. NetHope immediately responded to the scene to evaluate the damage and begin to restore information and communication technology to the affected area. NetHope enables humanitarian organizations to better serve the developing world through smarter use of technology, and in this case, better coordinate relief efforts. We help our member organizations collaborate, innovate, and leverage the full potential of information and communications technology to support their causes.
Thankfully, NetHope rallied good support from our private sector partners, who provided laptops, BGANs and satellite phones. We also had two foundations, The Patterson Foundation and Dell Foundation, provide funds to allow us to launch a strong response. This quick support not only allowed us to commit resources immediately to our members operating in the area, but it also allowed us to deploy a two-person emergency team to the affected areas.
This emergency team, led by me, performed a field assessment of additional ICT needs and provided training and equipment to the NetHope members. Seeing the destruction first hand was an emotional experience. The majority of the people worst affected were either farmers or fishermen living in rural areas. The Davao Oriental province, located along the eastern coast of the Mindanao Island, took the brunt of the wind damage and in the worst affected towns, every single house sustained damage.
It reminded me of areas I have visited that have been hit by tsunami, except this time it was wind that did the damage; not water. This means that most relief organizations expect to be working in the affected area on reconstruction and rehabilitation projects for at least months. You can see some of my photos here.
I also recorded a few videos of the devastation , and an interview with the ICT Manager of one of our member organizations, Plan International :. Telecommunication in the affected area was severely damaged and as a result we asked our satellite partners for assistance. Thuraya, a provider of satellite phones, provided phones along with airtime credit for each phone. Long-term partner Astrium Services supplied BGAN terminals satellite based internet terminals along with prepaid bandwidth.
These were placed in three of the worst affected towns in Davao Oriental Boston, Cateel, Baganga , where our NGO members shared them through wireless network equipment we also provided. We also looked at bringing VSAT terminal high bandwidth satellite internet terminals into the country, but based on the assessment mission and difficulties in getting equipment into the country due to regulatory issues, we decided to rely on the BGANs.
In order to run the relief and recovery efforts, our member organizations and their local implementation partners hired a local staff. This new staff was in need of laptops to be able to effectively communicate and coordinate the relief and recovery efforts. Our long-term partners HP and Dell donated laptops and Microsoft provided software for these laptops. Through one of our newest members, Direct Relief International, we were able to ship this equipment to the Philippines with support from FedEx.
NetHope also shipped 50 high definition video cameras Flip that were donated by Cisco. For Mindanao, unlike for the northwest Pacific as a whole, — was not at all a slack cyclone period. Until , tropical cyclones rarely and sporadically made landfall on Mindanao because it was in the ephemeral southern fringe of the northwest Pacific typhoon track. Since the U. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning System began to archive northwest Pacific tropical cyclones in , only 34 visited Mindanao by February [ 55 ].
After Bopha, another 13 had arrived by February Figure 9A. These 47 landfalls are incontrovertible, and our search for what the future might hold begins with them. During 30 of the 45 years from to , including the 8 years from to , not one tropical depression visited Mindanao. Most of the rare Mindanao tropical cyclones were weak: six tropical depressions and eight tropical storms.
Since , five typhoons did make landfall on Mindanao before Bopha, although Louise and Ike barely crossed northernmost Mindanao. In , C4 Kate passed 45 km south of New Bataan, which experienced heavy rain and floods but not much wind. Only five tropical cyclones of all categories arrived during the northwest Pacific peak typhoon season of June through October, although these included Kate in October and Ike in September A total of 36 came during the off season: 18 in March through June and 18 during November through January.
In the period from to , Mindanao tropical cyclones occurred only every 2. Then, from to , they began arriving roughly once a year. It is also troublesome that Mindanao has recently begun to suffer lethal cyclones in consecutive years. Two months earlier, a tropical depression arrived in Mindanao, making only the fifth year since for the island to receive two tropical cyclones.
Last, in the 5 years since Bopha, 2 tropical storms and 11 tropical depressions have visited Mindanao—so frequently that they had to be plotted as an insert in Figure 9A.
The increasing frequency of Mindanao storms since , although alarming, cannot be ascribed simply to the climate change from global warming. We must consider whether these changes are tied to multi-annual and multi-decadal fluctuations in western North Pacific sea-surface temperatures. Another cycle of sea-surface temperature, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation PDO , is so-called because its periods last for two or three decades [ 68 , 69 ].
This cyclicity is most distinctly expressed in the northern Pacific but is not clearly manifested in the tropics, although one study [ 70 ] attributes an interdecadal variation in May-June rainfall over southern China to a complex interplay between the PDO and the ENSO. The PDO does not correlate with Mindanao landfalls, or even with the frequency of all northwest Pacific typhoons.
Seven prominent climate scientists who reviewed [ 52 ] the great body of research on how climate change might be affecting tropical-cyclone activity explain that its many conflicting results arise from great variations in cyclone frequencies and intensities, as well as serious lacks in the quantity and quality of the records.
This increase is ascribed [ 71 ] to anthropogenic warming, which weakens the summertime winds that carry the tropical cyclones along. This slowing enhances the amount of time they have to take up water vapor from the ocean and deliver rain when their centers reach land. In short, the record of increasingly frequent landfalls on Mindanao may or may not indicate that more frequent typhoon disasters will happen there in the future, although recent reports [ 66 , 67 ] strongly imply as much.
Low-latitude areas, however, are given short shrift by most meteorological and climatologic analyses. We urgently need to understand how anthropogenic global warming is changing tropical-cyclone behavior in subequatorial regions because so many people live in them. Following our study of the Andap disaster, Project NOAH used high-resolution digital terrain models to identify and catalog all Philippine alluvial fans, by analyzing geomorphic features, slopes, gradients, and stream networks nationwide.
The catalog is accessible online for free in the NOAH portal [ 72 ]. More than alluvial fans were identified, and communities that might be affected by their debris flows are being educated about the hazard. In October , Typhoon Koppu Lando generated devastating debris flows on alluvial fans in Nueva Ecija province, but the vulnerable communities were warned and evacuated, and so no one was killed [ 73 ].
Later that year, Typhoon Melor Nona also triggering massive debris flows in Mindoro Island, burying or sweeping away houses and infrastructure in several communities situated on alluvial fans. Again, timely warnings and evacuations prevented the loss of life [ 74 ]. Mindanao has 21 active and potentially active volcanoes [ 77 ].
They are tourist attractions, producing geothermal energy, some are actively mined, and many support large agricultural populations.
These volcanoes still lack thorough study and monitoring instrumentation, and similar to the situation at Pinatubo Volcano on Luzon Island before its catastrophic eruption, their populations are unfamiliar with eruptions and lahars.
Any major eruption will eventually be followed by a large typhoon and lahars. The larger Mindanao volcanoes, being structurally and mechanically weak [ 78 ], do not need to erupt to undergo debris flows. All that is needed to trigger them would be exceptionally strong rainstorms in their vicinities. Bopha formed, became Category 5 Super Typhoon, and made landfall closer to the equator than any C5 tropical cyclone ever had before. More than mm of rain fell on the Mayo River watershed in only 7 hours.
A catastrophic debris flow it generated devastated Barangy Andap and killed of its inhabitants. We measured its deposit as a dry volume of 30 million m 3 , making it the seventh largest globally. Debris flows are remarkably poorly understood in the Philippines.
This is especially true in Mindanao because it is located in the southern fringe of the typhoon track of the northwest Pacific and has rarely experienced typhoons and the debris flows they generate. This lack of experience is a main cause of the loss of life in Andap. New Bataan and Andap were established in by people who did not understand the nature of the ancient debris-flow deposits on which they were building and the hazard that produced them.
This was still the case when Bopha approached: government authorities broadcast the fatal advice for people to avoid flooding on the high ground at Andap, which was sitting on the Mayo River alluvial fan. New Bataan and Andap were settled in the late s because of rapid population growth. The population continues to explode and has to occupy areas vulnerable to natural hazards.
The lesson of Andap and numerous other recent disasters is that new settlements must not be established before the hazards that threaten them have been properly evaluated. But this is a daunting requirement, because few, if any, safe sites remain unoccupied. Whether or not Mindanao will experience more frequent typhoons and debris flows is an urgent question that is very difficult to answer.
In , Western North Pacific tropical cyclones began to be archived accurately; by , the frequency of Mindanao landfalls had doubled. Learning whether this is caused by anthropogenic global warming is complicated by deficiencies in the quantity and quality of the archived data and by the irregularities in the ENSO climatic rhythms. For Mindanao, the problem is especially difficult because most of its tropical cyclones do not arrive in the main typhoon season of July through October, and most are only tropical depressions, which most climatologists and meteorologists do not include as data for their models.
This is an excellent example of how Earth systems, which are kept in balance by numerous interacting phenomena, oscillate vigorously when they are disturbed. Global warming is a continuing and accelerating disturbance that prevents returns to equilibria.
Mindanao and the entire Philippine nation urgently need to prepare their populations for more frequent hazards, including floods, storm surges, landslides, debris flows, and forest fires. A developing country like the Philippines has limited resources for hazard-mitigation measures. Philippine society is intensely focused on the family, and so the best and least expensive governmental approach is to provide every family with good, easily-accessible information, so it can develop its own emergency plans.
Our study of the Mayo debris flow motivated us to identify more than Philippine alluvial fans and to prepare the communities that its debris flows may affect. This work has already helped to save lives from major debris flows in Training Center for Applied Geodesy and Photogrammetry. We thank Congresswoman M. Zamora for logistical support and Thomas Pierson for the information about debris-flow mechanics.
Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3. Once the government realized the threat posed by the storm, officials scrambled to evacuate people from the most dangerous areas, but residents were hard to convince.
A bout 20 typhoons and storms lash the northern and central Philippines each year, but they rarely ever hit the southern region. Warnings to evacuate were not taken seriously. The death toll started in the hundreds and climbed as days passed and missing people went unfound. The day after the storm, rain started to fall again, triggering panic and fear of another day of flash floods. The fear, as well as the effects of the storm, would continue for years. Hundreds were left in poverty.
Before the nation could even recover, it had to suffer through an even stronger typhoon in — Typhoon Haiyan. It took years to rebuild from all the damage. The Department of Social Welfare and Development were still building new homes for victims in But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! On December 4, , Islamic militants in Lebanon release kidnapped American journalist Terry Anderson after 2, days in captivity.
Typhoon hits Philippines Typhoon Bopha not finished yet Trees have been uprooted and fragile houses blown away on Mindanao, Gordon said, adding that the corrugated iron roofs of some buildings were being carried through the air by the wind like "flying machetes.
At least 95 people have been killed so far as a result of the storm, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said Wednesday. The typhoon has affected more than , people, demolished houses and stranded people in two Mindanao regions and parts of the Visayas region, according to the disaster agency.
More than , people are in evacuation centers, it said. A landslide in eastern Mindanao blocked a national highway, the news agency reported, leavening hundreds of people in buses, vans and cars stuck on the road. Maintenance workers were using heavy equipment to clear the mud and rocks, said Dennis Flores, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Works and Highways cited by the news agency.
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