Ntural Diasaters in Asia

[Jim]

Manila got hammered with a typhoon which then proceeded to devastate Vietnam. In Subic, because of the bay, we don't get huge winds but thyphoons in the hood mean LOTS of rain. If there's lots of rain in the mountains, it inundates the rivers which pass by here on the way to the ocean. No floods this time.

There are major relief efforts in Manila. On local cable TV you could see rapidly lowing waters going through streets on the city taking people and everything else in it's path with it. There is supposed to by another typhoon tomorrow which hits northern Luzon.

Luzon is the northern most island and most populous wit Manila as it's major city and Subic 3 1/2 away. The southern regions, The Visayas and Mindanao get fewer typhoons.

There were also two earthquakes in Indonesia this week and an ocean earth quake causing a tsusami in Samoa. Last month Taiwan had floods and mudslides. Of course when you combine these incredible furies of nature with the precarious lives of poor people whose homes are not particularly sturdy, the result is devastating. In the Phils there is considerable deforestation which makes the mountains ripe for landslides.

[Benjio]

When most people talk about bad weather and natural disasters I kind of scoff at them. Living on the Gulf Coast for most of my life, I can tell you with all honesty that most people haven't seen worse than a CAT5 Hurricane.

But there's absolutely no comparison to what I've seen in the past few years in that area. Tsunamis, typhoons, earthquakes. So much devastation being concentrated in such a small region makes me question whether or not people should be living there in the first place.