The story of Typhoon Yolanda (International codename “Haiyan’) starts on Saturday, November 2, 2013. Six days before it struck land, it appeared as a low pressure area in the Pacific. But the next day, it looked very serious. According to Rutgers University Climatologist Dr. David Robinson, “it became very apparent that this was going to blossom into a super typhoon. We can see the counter clockwise rotation, the storm is most intense right around the eye. But the outer bands of the storm were packing a bit of the punches as well. This is a textbook example of a classically strong super typhoon. This is a terrifying storm.”[i]
Prof. Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology likewise observed that “It was a monster storm. Probably the most powerful typhoon to make landfall.”[ii] Even then, the scientists knew the storm was surely heading for the Philippines.
At the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in the US Wednesday late afternoon (early Thursday in the Philippines), meteorologists said the winds were packing a strength of 175 miles per hour (or 281 kilometers per hour), much stronger than the earlier reading of Pagasa in Mactan, which registered 225 kph. American meteorologists classified the superthyphoon as Category 5. “The most powerful tropical cyclone of 2013 anywhere on earth is raging toward the Philippines,” warned the US-based The Weather Channel on Wednesday at 5:16 p.m. EST. Pagasa would later say this was going to be the strongest typhoon in 2013. By then, it was already packing maximum sustained winds of 215 kilometers per hour near the center and gusts of up to 250 kph.[iv]
Also that same Thursday morning, another American Florida-based meteorologist Bryan McNoldy tweeted, "Haiyan has achieved tropical cyclone perfection. It is now estimated at 165 knots (190mph), with an 8.0 on the Dvorak scale... the highest possible value."[v]
At ground zero
That Thursday, American storm chasers Josh Morgerman, Mark Thomas and James Reynolds arrived in Tacloban together with Filipino reporters covering the storm, and billeted themselves at the Oriental Hotel, one of the posh hotels in Tacloban located near the beach at Candahug, Palo, Leyte. This was the landing site of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the allied forces that arrived in Leyte in 1945 towards the end of the Second World War. The site of the hotel was conducive to tourists under normal circumstances, but that day, it was in harm’s way being less than a hundred meters from the beach.
“This whole town’s gonna be flattened,” said Reynolds, referring to Oriental hotel and its vicinity which had become a residential area for hundreds of professionals and their families. The storm chasers rightly predicted that there could be serious fatalities for those living near the coasts. They knew they would be dealing with an “unfolding human catastrophe.”
Safety considerations changed their minds. That very same evening, they checked out of the Oriental Hotel and transferred to Hotel Alejandro located in the heart of Tacloban. Said Mark Thomas: “Safety first. I don’t think I have ever seen anything of the sort. This is some serious, serious stuff.” On the day of the storm, they would make videos of it as it hit the city. Tacloban would be Yolanda’s second landfall, the first being Guiuan, Eastern Samar.[vi]
At the city hall in Tacloban, Mayor Alfred Romualdez met with the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council to prepare for the advent of Yolanda. Classes were suspended and evacuation started. The Department of Public Works and Highways told him the design of the school buildings, which had been turned into evacuation centers, was only for winds of up to 160 kph. So these had to be retrofitted to resist winds up to 235 kph, DPWH personnel told him.
Romualdez was aware of the Pagasa warning about the possibility of a storm surge, but it never occurred to him that its strength would overwhelm the city. In their deliberations at the CDRRMC, only the airport at San Jose was tagged as the danger zone, but not the entire San Jose peninsula. The city itself seemed a safe place. No one thought the deluge would hit the heart of Tacloban.
That same Thursday, two national officials arrived in the city to be at the scene when the typhoon struck: Department of the Interior and National Government Secretary Manuel Roxas III and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin. Evidently, they were prepared for the worst scenario. They immediately called for a meeting of the mayors and governors of the region at 8:00 in the evening at the regional police headquarters. Romualdez, the city’s disaster council, some mayors and governors were present. The Tacloban mayor did not spell out the details of the meeting but said another meeting was scheduled for the morning of the next day as they expected the typhoon to hit Tacloban only at 2:00 in the afternoon.
After that meeting, Alfred and his staff still went around the city urging people to evacuate to safer grounds, to the 29 evacuation centers they had prepared. They had 60 vehicles ready to transport the evacuees. The internet told him that the typhoon was over 300 kph. In that case, there was nowhere to evacuate the people. But these centers were better and safer than their fragile homes along the coast.[vii] Later events would prove the local officials wrong.
Georgina Bulasa, who was interviewed by Discovery Channel, said everything appeared normal even on the day before the storm. People went to the grocery stores to buy food items, but they were not panicky.
Fr. Hector Villamil, a parish vicar of Sto. Niño Parish, said: “We never considered the storm surge and the destruction that it will bring us...It was not an alarming thing for us. We’ve been used to typhoons. It was not something extraordinary to worry about.” He would later realize his mistake.[viii]
“No one in Tacloban seemed worried in the slightest about the typhoon. I saw a couple of people working on their roofs – tightening ropes and putting down tires and that sort of thing. But that is all. And as people have told me repeatedly, there has never been a typhoon like this in their lifetime. The local people were expecting some high winds and some rain and perhaps a bit of flooding. No one could have imagined what was really coming our way,” wrote Canadian Doug Nienhuis, a cycling enthusiast, amateur photographer and blogger who experienced the typhoon first hand in Tacloban.[ix]
(Continue here)
[i] “The Inside story of typhoon Haiyan,” Discovery Channel[i]
[ii] Ibid
[iii] “Pagasa 225 kph winds of ‘Yolanda’ similar to force of Pablo, Ruping”, Cebu Daily News, 12:27 pm, Wednesday, November 6th, 2013
[iv] Mangosing, Frances, “Yolanda is ‘most powerful typhoon for 2013’—weather experts,” INQUIRER.net, 8:50 am, Thursday, November 7th, 2013
[v] Chappell, Bill, “Off The Charts' Super Typhoon Haiyan Hits Philippines,” November 07, 2013 1:07 PM
[vi] Josh Morgerman, Mark Thomas, James Reynolds, “Documenting Supertyphoon Yolanda – The Back Story,” a video presentation of the storm chasers
[vii] Alfred Romualdez story at Senate hearing, a GMA videotape
[viii] Op cit, Discovery Channel
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