Official: Super Typhoon Kills 10,000 in Philippines | gCaptain

I don’t know how they can call this official since they say right in the article they’ve only found 300-400 bodies. It’s still terrible. Hearing of things like this, I wonder how is that possible? I’ve never been to the Philippines but I would assume that just like everywhere else, they do have communications with the rest of the world.

There was plenty of warning that this storm was headed their way and that it was going to be VERY powerful when it got there! They had the warnings, why didn’t they leave? There’s a world of difference in outcomes for people who get the warnings (and so can/do act on them) and those who don’t!

The Galveston Storm of 1900 killed ‘more than 6000’ people (estimates range from 6-12,000 out of a total of about 37,000). Considering that Galveston is a very low lying, flat island and there was practically NO warning back then, they were probably lucky that ANYONE survived. Here’s a link to a Wikipedia article about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane.

I’m very sorry for the people of the Philippines and I wish them a speedy recovery, but I just can’t fathom why this sort of thing still happens. I expect many people were just too caught up in their daily lives to worry much about ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ It happened here in the USA too. Remember Hurricane Katrina? It devastated New Orleans and many other coastal areas from Florida to Texas.

We had plenty of warning about Katrina too. Why did so many people stick around New Orleans when they should have known what would happen? After all, New Orleans is below sea level, it’s surrounded by water, and the levees are old and it had been stated many times in the past that they should not be expected to survive a bad storm.

Seems to me that most of the people who stayed in New Orleans were poor. Is it the same in the Philippines, that only the people who stayed in the low lying, storm devastated areas were poor (relatively)? I know the Philippines is a poor country, but what I’m wondering is: did so many people die there because of that lack of resources? Personal resources and community resources. Or were there other reasons? Why did so many people decide not to heed the warnings???

The reason I’m curious about that is because so many people here in the USA blame what happened in New Orleans on lack of resources. They say that the poor of New Orleans took the brunt of the damage that Katrina caused. They say that the poor had no way to escape the storm. They say that our government is responsible for causing the deaths of those people in New Orleans because they didn’t throw enough money and resources into the preparations.

I understand that the Philippine government does not have the resources that the US government does. Is that why the US government was blamed for the disaster in New Orleans? Is that why no one is blaming the government of the Philippines? Or is the difference in the people themselves???

What makes some people do EVERYTHING they possibly can do to take care of THEMSELVES? While so many others don’t?

PS-the question applies to more than just hurricanes!!