20150317 BBC_Cyclone Pam: Vanuatu 'needs food'

Vanuatu urgently needs food and relief supplies, officials said, days after Cyclone Pam caused massive damage across the Pacific nation.

Houses, schools and crops have been destroyed by the storm, which hit the islands as a category five.

So far 24 people are reported dead but this could rise. There are islands south of the capital where the situation is not yet known.

Those who have flown over the islands report widespread devastation.

Across the nation, many people have lost their homes or face extensive rebuilding. Telecommunications, power and water supplies have all been badly affected.

"We urgently need water purification tablets to make sure that the water is safe to drink," Alice Clements of Unicef told the BBC.

"We urgently need food for communities whose crops have been absolutely destroyed and will take up to three months to grow. We absolutely need shelter."

Benjamin Shing, of President Baldwin Lonsdale's office, echoed her comments.

"We are relying on the fact that the food crops and the gardens are still edible and they can be used for the first week but after [that] we'll need to get some rations on the ground," he told Australian media.

As well as crops, residents' stockpiles of food had been destroyed and wood was too wet for people to cook with, reports said.

Many houses had corrugated iron roofs that were torn off by the storm

Residents have been searching through their houses for salvageable possessions

Roads are blocked by fallen trees and debris

The storm hit Vanuatu on Saturday, bringing very high winds.

Aid is arriving from nations including Australia, New Zealand and the UK but officials say distributing supplies will take time, given damage to infrastructure and the number of islands.

"It will take days until we have a clear picture and [understand] the full extent of the damage," Kate Roux of the International Red Cross told the BBC.

In Port Vila, the capital, a clean-up is under way but the destruction was extensive. Power and water have been restored in some areas but up to 90% of homes have been damaged.

The hospital is coping with an influx of injured people but a surgeon said beds had been moved outside because of structural damage.

On the main island and in Torba and Penama provinces to the north, some 3,300 people were in evacuation shelters, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

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Cyclone Pam's impact on Vanuatu

24

confirmed fatalities - as of 16 March

• 3,300 people forced to leave their homes
• 19,000 households likely to need emergency food aid based on storm's path
• 37 evacuation centres set up in Torba and Penama provinces and main island of Efate

Source: UN Ocha

Of islands to the south of the capital in the direct path of the cyclone, including Tanna - home to 29,000 people - and Erromango, much less is known.

"We have no contact of any sort with the outer islands, the priority is to get communications up and running," Joe Lowry, a spokesman for International Organisation for Migration (ILM), told Reuters news agency.

"It's very, very concerning that we haven't heard anything from the outlying islands."

Military planes that have flown over the islands have reported extensive damage to houses and crops.

"We understand that the reconnaissance imagery shows widespread devastation," Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said of Tanna. "Not only buildings flattened - palm plantations, trees. It's quite a devastating sight."

The president, returning from a conference in Japan, has described the storm as a "monster" that wiped out years of development.

He has linked the disaster to climate change, citing changing weather patterns, rising seas and heavier-than-average rain in Vanuatu.

Australia announced on Tuesday that it was sending more personnel, including a search and rescue team, and three more military planes carrying aid.

How poor is Vanuatu?

• The UN considers it one of world's least developed countries. It has a GDP of $828m (£560.7m) compared to neighbouring Australia's $1.56tn, according to the World Bank
• About two-thirds of people make a living from agriculture. Fishing, tourism and offshore financial services are the other main industries
• Australia estimates that about 70% of the population of 250,000 live on remote islands or in rural areas, with few services and limited access to clean drinking water, transport or electricity
• Australia is Vanuatu's main donor, giving A$60.7m (£31.45m: $46.5) in 2013/4, about 60% of total aid

20131113 BBC_Mapping Haiyan

Millions of people have been affected by the typhoon which swept through the Philippines with winds gusting up to 270km/h. Parts of the low-lying islands were completely flattened and many hundreds of thousands of people are now homeless.

Path of the typhoon

The map below shows the path of the storm through the Philippines. The worst-affected islands include Leyte and Cebu.

Relief Web has produced estimates of the numbers of people affected in each province. It says Tacloban City in Leyte province has been devastated, with most houses destroyed. In total, 670,000 people are said to have been displaced - about 55% of them are living in evacuation centres.

But with roads blocked and poor communications, a complete picture of how many people have been affected may not emerge for some time.

Height of the the storm surge

The strong winds whipped up by Typhoon Haiyan also contributed to a storm surge, which sent a wall of water crashing through some low-lying areas. The storm surge reached its height at the city of Tacloban.

Although official calculations by the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) put the height of the storm surge in Tacloban at 2.3m, local conditions will have meant the actual level was far higher.

The city is located at the head of a bay which faced directly towards the oncoming typhoon and the arrival of the storm surge coincided with a high tide forcing the water levels up to about 5m.

Tacloban devastation

The typhoon and storm surge has destroyed much of Tacloban, flattening buildings and leaving many of the 220,000 population homeless. Piles of debris are now hampering relief efforts and people are desperate for food and shelter.

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City devastated

Buildings flattened

Airport damage

Evacuation centre

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• Tacloban city devastated by storm surge

  ×
  Aid efforts in the Philippines have been hampered by bad weather. Millions of people have been affected and relief workers are struggling to get supplies into the worst-hit areas.

  The exact number of dead is still unknown – but it is believed more than 10,000 residents died in the city of Tacloban alone.

  Jon Donnison reports from the city where hardly a single building has been left standing.

• City flattened

  ×
  Much of Tacloban was devastated by the typhoon and resulting storm surge. Roads in and out of the city have been blocked by people trying to get in to find relatives and friends and people desperate to get out. Officials say the death toll may rise even further than the current 10,000 estimate as the full scale of the devastation becomes clear. Most of those who died are thought to have drowned or been crushed by collapsing buildings.

• Airport damaged

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  Hundreds of people have gathered at Tacloban airport � some are desperate for food and water, while others are trying to get a flight out. The airport partially reopened on Monday 11 November, three days after the typhoon, but only for flights carrying relief supplies and equipment. The airport has also become a makeshift morgue for the growing number of bodies.

• Evacuation centre

  ×
  
  The city’s sports stadium withstood the force of the storm and thousands of people have now taken up temporary residence there. There have been reports of people attacking trucks loaded with food, tents and water, as supplies of food and medicine in the city run low. Severed roads and communications have hampered relief efforts.

The city lies on the easterly island of Leyte and caught the full force of the typhoon with winds approaching 310km/h (195mph).

The spit of land on which Tacloban airport is located and the downtown areas are the parts of the city that have been worst-affected.

20131113 BBC_Q&A: Disaster management and aid after Typhoon Haiyan

Many people were unaware of the risks from the storm surge that accompanied the typhoon

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Typhoon Haiyan

• A smiling mask
• Tour a street
• Before and after
• Mapping Haiyan

Typhoon Haiyan, which swept through the central Philippines on Friday, was one of the strongest recorded storms ever to make landfall. At least 2,200 people were killed and the UN estimates some 11 million people were affected. But there have been complaints that aid is taking too long to reach survivors.

How do disaster management and aid agencies plan ahead of disasters?

The United Nations and major aid agencies have regional offices around the world which co-ordinate preparations for a disaster. "We're designed to be on standby in countries where it's likely to hit," Greg Barrow, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), told the BBC.

Immediately after a disaster, the WFP sends in emergency teams to assess what the food needs are, how supplies can best be delivered, and how long the need is likely to continue. They also need to determine how capable the affected country is of responding, and whether its infrastructure is capable of handling such large quantities of aid and has safe places to store it.

In the case of Typhoon Haiyan, the WFP has used its regional offices in Subang in Malaysia, while its relief items (high-energy biscuits, shelter, cooking equipment, medical supplies) have been brought in to the Philippines by chartered aircraft from the UN's humanitarian response depots in Dubai.

Was the Philippines government prepared for Haiyan?

Philippine communities are used to the passage of typhoons - many towns have a disaster management committee and these would have made their own preparations.

Meteorologists had predicted that Haiyan would sweep through the Philippines as a "super typhoon". The government issued major typhoon warnings, and evacuated thousands of people to shelters.

But Greg Barrow says that Haiyan "was unique in scale and impact" and "went beyond their capacity" to be fully prepared. And the risks from the accompanying storm surge were not fully appreciated.

"The preparedness was enough, but there was a disconnect with what people expected," Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross, told the BBC. "People didn't know about the storm surge. The government should have said 'You're going to have big waves, tsunamis'."

Some people did not heed the evacuation warnings, and many shelters which had been considered safe were destroyed.

What are the priorities after a disaster like Haiyan?

"In situations like this, the government should take care of re-establishing lifelines - power, water, communications, and helping NGOs find where they should be," says Richard Gordon, adding that the first priority is water.

"As the Red Cross, we've been distributing water, water tanks, thousands of ready-to-eat meals, medicine, shelter, blankets, generators, and inevitably body bags. We've given out satellite phones so that people can trace the missing. The sick are being treated on the spot or evacuated to neighbouring provinces."

He says there is an attempt to create a "regularised lifestyle" for people in base camps, with clinics, food and eventually schools.

What has caused the delay in aid delivery and was it inevitable?

It is accepted by many relief agencies that there have been delays between sending resources out to the disaster zone and distributing them. The head of the UN disaster assessment team in Tacloban airport said there was a "logjam" of aid ready to go, but no way of moving it.

"It's almost all in country - either in Manila or in Cebu, but it's not here," Sebastian Rhodes Stampa told the Associated Press. "We're going to have a real challenge with logistics in terms of getting things out of here, into town, out of town, into the other areas. The reason for that essentially is that there are no trucks, the roads are all closed."

Justin Forsyth, CEO of Save the Children, told the BBC that until debris at the airport was cleared, "we face a 10-hour journey across storm-damaged land to reach people most in need".

"Some military flights have managed to land in Tacloban, which is promising, but we urgently need the airport to be cleared so it can become a 24-hour aid-flight hub."

The remoteness of many affected communities has also a been problem, with much of the relief effort focused on the overstretched and damaged Tacloban airport in Leyte province.

Security is a real concern. In some cases there has been looting, while eight people were reported killed on Wednesday when a wall collapsed as crowds stormed a rice warehouse near Tacloban.

"The delay was incredibly frustrating and in some respects unacceptable," says Greg Barrow. "It's not inevitable in all cases. But given the scale of the storm and its impact, there was little that could have been done about it."

20131112 BBC Philippine Tacloban_Haiyan_centre of the storm

Tacloban: City at the centre of the storm

A rescue operation is under way in the Philippines in the wake of one of the strongest storms ever to hit the country. Typhoon Haiyan left a trail of devastation through the central islands - the city of Tacloban in Leyte province is one of the worst affected areas.

Continue reading the main story

CLICKABLE

City devastated

Buildings flattened

Airport damage

Evacuation centre

• ×
  

• Tacloban city devastated by storm surge

  ×
  Aid efforts in the Philippines have been hampered by bad weather. Millions of people have been affected and relief workers are struggling to get supplies into the worst-hit areas.

  The exact number of dead is still unknown – but it is believed more than 10,000 residents died in the city of Tacloban alone.

  Jon Donnison reports from the city where hardly a single building has been left standing.

• City flattened

  ×
  Much of Tacloban was devastated by the typhoon and resulting storm surge. Roads in and out of the city have been blocked by people trying to get in to find relatives and friends and people desperate to get out. Officials say the death toll may rise even further than the current 10,000 estimate as the full scale of the devastation becomes clear. Most of those who died are thought to have drowned or been crushed by collapsing buildings.

• Airport damaged

  ×
  Hundreds of people have gathered at Tacloban airport � some are desperate for food and water, while others are trying to get a flight out. The airport partially reopened on Monday 11 November, three days after the typhoon, but only for flights carrying relief supplies and equipment. The airport has also become a makeshift morgue for the growing number of bodies.

• Evacuation centre

  ×
  
  The city’s sports stadium withstood the force of the storm and thousands of people have now taken up temporary residence there. There have been reports of people attacking trucks loaded with food, tents and water, as supplies of food and medicine in the city run low. Severed roads and communications have hampered relief efforts.

Continue reading the main story

The true scale of casualties remains unclear. The authorities say at least 10,000 people may have died in the disaster - and according to UN officials about 11 million people have been affected - many have been left homeless.

In Tacloban, a city of more than 220,000 people, the mayor has declared a state of calamity. Many peoples' homes have been destroyed and people are desperate for food and shelter, but debris and continuing bad weather are hampering efforts to distribute aid.

The city lies on the easterly island of Leyte and caught the full force of the typhoon with winds approaching 310km/h (195mph). It was followed by a storm surge which is reported to have reached up to 5m and flattened homes, schools and badly damaged the airport.

Tacloban City elevation

Like many places in the Philippines, much of Tacloban is very low-lying. The spit of land on which the airport is located lies well below five metres. Official figures from the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System suggest the storm surge reached 2.3m in Tacloban, but anecdotal evidence from people on the ground suggests it was much higher.

Tacloban is situated at the head of a bay, directly in line with the approaching typhoon. The winds pushed the water level higher and continued to rise as it was funnelled into the bay between the islands of Leyte and Samar, until it reached an estimated 5m around Tacloban and nearby settlements.

Although the airport was severely damaged, it re-opened three days after the typhoon to allow in the first relief supplies.

US military planes have begun delivering World Food Programme supplies, which are then being taken by helicopter to more remote regions.

Many people have left Tacloban, but for those that remain the main concern is still food and water.

Aid agencies have warned of a deteriorating security situation as people get more desperate. Although a field hospital has been set up, health officials have warned that the worst-affected areas were entering a peak danger period.

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Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports on the wait for aid in Tacloban

With another tropical storm on its way to the Philippines, the need for shelter, safe water and sanitation is essential, if outbreaks of infectious diseases are to be avoided.

20141207 BBC_Philippine Typhoon Now and Then

Typhoon Haiyan: Images of then and now

Typhoon Haiyan, with its brutal winds and resulting storm surge, tore across central Philippines 12 months ago, killing or leaving missing more than 7,000 people.

The storm, the most powerful to ever make landfall, destroyed many of the country's low-lying coastal farming and fishing communities - already among the nation's poorest.

Images taken in affected areas after the storm and a year later show how people are now picking up the pieces of their lives.

Magallanes district, Tacloban

Anibong district, Tacloban

Airport road, Tacloban

San Roque Elementary School, Tolosa, Leyte

20141206 Philippine Typhoon Satellite images

Super Typhoon Haiyan: Satellite images

Super Typhoon Haiyan has battered the Philippines with ferocious winds of up to 320 km/h (199mph). Although not the most powerful storm to have ever formed in recorded history, it could be the strongest at the time of landfall.

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Satellite images show the extent of the storm as it approached the Philippines on 7 November. At times it stretched 600km (372 miles) across. If the same storm was placed over a map of Europe it would stretch from London to Berlin.

How Super Typhoon Haiyan would stretch if placed over Northern Europe

Super Typhoon Haiyan is the 25th tropical storm to enter Philippine territory this year and reports suggest there have been sustained winds of some 320 km/h (199mph) with gusts of up to 378 km/h (235mph).

The "worst" storm is hard to define as such events differ in extremes of wind speeds or gusts, pressure, damage or loss of human life. Some major storms also lose their ferocity as they cross the sea and make landfall.

Major storms in the Pacific region in recent years include the Super Typhoon Megi which hit the Philippines in October 2010 before picking up again and moving on to mainland China. Damage caused by winds reaching 268 km/h (167mph) left 200,000 Filipinos homeless.

But there were surprisingly few fatalities compared with the 2012 Typhoon Bopha, whose 175mph winds wreaked havoc and caused more than 1,000 deaths - or the 1999 Orissa Cyclone in India which wiped out everything in its path, leaving more than 10,000 dead and millions homeless.

Hurricane Katrina, by comparison was Category 3, with winds of 205 km/h (125 mph) when it made landfall in August 2005 in the United States.

The relative strengths of Typhoon Haiyan (left), Typhoon Bopha (centre) and Hurricane Katrina (right)

Katrina's trail of destruction through the Bahamas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama left around 1,800 people dead and caused an estimated $108bn in damage.

20141207 BBC_Typhoon sweeps across Philippines

Typhoon Hagupit sweeps across Philippines

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Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports on the damage done by Typhoon Hagupit

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Typhoon Hagupit is sweeping across the eastern Philippines, toppling trees and power lines and threatening coastal areas with a powerful sea-surge.

More than half a million people have fled coastal villages in the area, which was still recovering from Typhoon Haiyan last year.

In Tacloban, where thousands were killed by Haiyan, roofs have been blown away and streets are flooded.

But Hagupit does not appear to have been as severe as many had feared.

So far there have been no reports of casualties.

The BBC's Jonathan Head in Legazpi, about 200km (125 miles) north of Tacloban, said Hagiput was clearly a powerful storm but nowhere near as powerful as Haiyan.

The authorities believed they were well prepared this time, he adds, but it could be some time before the extent of damage in more remote areas becomes clear.

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Jonathan Head reports from Cawayan, on the outskirts of Legazpi, where some families chose not to evacuate

Officials told the BBC that lighter than expected rain meant there was less chance of landslides, but that the strong winds could still bring down trees on homes.

Joey Salceda, governor of Albay province where Legazpi is situated, told the BBC that the main lesson from Typhoon Haiyan had been to prepare well and to evacuate people from vulnerable areas.

"That's what we've been doing, so our principal instrument to achieve zero casualties is essentially evacuation," he said.

"It doesn't happen overnight so you need to train people. I feel confident we can achieve our zero casualty goal."

The BBC's Maria Byrne in Tacloban sent this image of people beginning to clear up along the seafront on Sunday morning

High winds sent waves crashing into the coast at Legazpi

Though trees were brought down in Legazpi the city appeared to have escaped extensive damage

Joey Salceda, governor of Albay province, says widespread evacuation has been vital

At the scene: Saira Asher, BBC News, Legazpi

As the worst of the storm is passing over Albay province, the authorities have asked people living on hills prone to mudslides to evacuate to the main cities.

But one family in Cawayan, a tiny village on the outskirts of Legazpi, have decided not to go. They have a sick woman of 98 who can't go with them and they won't leave her.

Other families have come to ride out the typhoon with them because they have a stronger house. They said they stayed up all night as the storm raged.

They are afraid but have no choice. Fallen trees litter the small road leading to their house. Some of the bamboo huts have fallen over. Inside they all huddle together to wait out the storm.

Hagupit, known locally as Ruby, was packing maximum sustained winds of 175km/h (109mph) and gusts of 210km/h (130 mph) when it made landfall in Dolores in Eastern Samar province on Saturday evening local time.

In Borongan city, north-east of Tacloban, buildings were brought down by the strong winds

Dolores police spokesman Alex Robin told AP news agency late on Saturday that many trees had already come down.

"We are totally in the dark here. The only light comes from flashlights."

Maulid Warfa, the head of Unicef's field office in Tacloban, said their five-storey concrete building was shaking under the force of the storm.

Speaking early on Sunday he said: "We're in this dark building and it's raining heavily and there's no electricity and we are using candles.

"We have a generator... but because of the rain and the flood and power problems we have switched it off. It's too dangerous."

Mr Warfa added: "Our concern now is not us sitting in this building. Our concern is for the little children who have had to go through this experience for the second time in 13 months."

About 19,000 people from coastal villages are in 26 evacuation centres, Tacloban's disaster office spokesman Ilderando Bernadas told Reuters.

Haiyan - known as Yolanda in the Philippines - was the most powerful typhoon ever recorded over land. It tore through the central Philippines in November 2013 leaving more than 7,000 dead or missing.

Hagupit's huge diameter of 600km (370 miles) meant that about 50 million people, or half the nation's population, were living in vulnerable areas, officials have said.

Wind and rain are thrashing the city of Legazpi

Residents of Legazpi get some sleep in an evacuation centre as the storm bears down