GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The numbers, still climbing, are mind-numbing: officially, 495 people lost their lives in the typhoon that swept through the Philippines Tuesday 4 December, and hundreds are still missing. Typhoon Bopha, called Pablo in the Philippines, arrived with 160kph winds and swept through the fragile, disaster-prone south of the country, Mindanao Island, sweeping away trees, and creating floods and landslides.
AP is reporting today that disaster warnings went unheeded in the region. “A government-issued geological hazard map identifies the extremely precarious location of the farming community in the southern Philippines as “highly susceptible to flooding and landslides.”
Links to other sites: Australian, NY Times
