Typhoon Haiyan case study

Physical causes

• Surrounded by Pacific Ocean where temperatures are above 23°C

• Cluster of thunderstorms in the region in November 2013

• Light wind sheer, keeping the storm structure in tact

• Small islands that couldn’t absorb the storm’s energy

Human factors that contributed to scale of damage

• Low level of development in the Philippines affected the country’s ability to cope with natural disasters of this scale

• Much of the country lives in extreme poverty

• Rapid population growth, particularly in vulnerable coastal areas (e.g in Tacloban the population grew from 76,000 to 221,000 in 40 years)

• Buildings and storm shelters are poorly constructed

Characteristics

• Violent

• Ferocious winds - 320 km/h - made landfall at its peak

• 400mm of rain

• Waves as big as 15m tall

Impacts

Environmental

• Soil erosion and loss of vegetation

Economic

• Estimated economic damage of $2.86 billion

• Other primary industries damages (e.g fishing boats and coconut trees - the Philippines is one of the world’s largest produces of coconuts)

• 130,000 tonnes of rice ruined

Social

• 11.5 million people affected

• At least 6300 dead

• 1800 declared missing

• 670,000 made homeless

• 90% of houses in Tacloban demolished

• 130,000 houses destroyed

Responses

• UK government provided food, shelter, clean water, medicine and other supplies for up to 800,000 victims

• Several charities provided emergency aid (water, food and shelter)

• Repaired fishing boats for distributing rice seeds

• UN launched and international aid appeal in December 2013 for £480 million to finance the humanitarian relief effort for 2014

Evaluation of responses

• Helped a lot of people to get food, water, shelter in the short term

• Some places were unable to be reached due to the amount of damage and help needed, meaning it was not effective long term