ReliefWeb

Spotlight on the Philippines: an historical perspective and the latest on Tropical cyclone Haiyan

EM-DAT figures cast light on the historical impact of disaster in the Republic of the Philippines, from 1900-2012. In this period, there were 531 recorded disaster events, 60,059 fatalties, economic damages of 10.5 billion USD with just under 160 million people affected (see A). Although sporadic geological events, such as the 1976 Earthquake have significantly marked mortality figures (6,000) ), the recurring narrative centres on frequent impacts from powerful tropical cyclones. The Philippines have experienced a number of high-impacts storms, for example the 1991 TC Thelma killed 5,956 people, and more recently in December 2012, TC Bopha claimed 1,901 lives (see B). From a disaster type perspective, data for the Philippines shows a higher proportion of storm related events (58%), and significantly greater share of storm impacts 68% mortality, 78% total affected and 77% of total economic losses (see D). Whereas the wider SE region highlights a mixed picture, where deaths from storms cause near equal percentage as earthquake events (43% and 45%), and economic damages largely dominated by floods (55%) rather than storms, 19% by comparison (see C). The pervasiveness of TC’s, compared to SE region, is largely due to at-risk location of the Philippines, situated at the nucleus of tropical cyclone (typhoon) activity. The latest data on TC Haiyan suggests it will top the three categories of impact, making it deadliest natural disaster in Philippines modern history, affecting the largest number of people and inflicting the greatest economic losses. As of 29/1/2014/, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council places the burden of mortality from Haiyan at 6,201 (+1,785 still missing) with 28,626 injured, 16 million affected and 4 million displaced. The economic damages have reached approximately 838 million USD, with models estimating that total damages are likely to fall between 6.5 and 14 billion USD.

Debarati Guha-Sapir, Director