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Agence France-Presse

When Super Typhoon Haiyan struck in 2013 it was the disaster-prone Philippines’ worst storm on record, with 7,350 people dead or missing.
Several factors caused the staggering death toll:
STRONGEST STORM
With gusts exceeding 305kph at first landfall, Haiyan was the strongest ever to hit land at the time. Typhoons more commonly reach peak velocity while still travelling over oceans.
The powerful front drove a giant wall of seawater called a storm surge, estimated to be 7.5 metres high, into coastal towns like Tacloban, a city of 240,000 people.
Overall, Haiyan tore across a group of islands with a combined area the size of Portugal.

LOW-LYING ISLANDS
The Philippines is the first major landmass on the Pacific Ocean’s typhoon belt. A wall of mountains on the coast of the main island of Luzon dampens some of the blows, but the smaller, flatter islands – such as those that lay in Haiyan’s path – are more exposed.
Much of Tacloban sits less than five metres above sea level. The town and others nearby were defenceless against the storm surge that funnelled through a shallow bay sandwiched between Leyte and Samar islands.
Five of the biggest typhoons to hit Asia
INADEQUATE WARNINGS
Even though the hardest-hit areas received early warnings, the weather service and other officials later admitted that the victims were unfamiliar with the term “storm surge”.
The last deadly storm surge in Tacloban had hit in 1887, more than a century before Haiyan. In a country with scores of regional languages, the government also did not have local terms to be able to communicate the phenomenon to everyone.
After the disaster, the government agency worked with linguists to craft simpler meteorological terms to ensure the danger posed by typhoons, floods, landslides and other adverse events would be fully understood by all.

EXTREME POVERTY
In a nation where one in five people earn less than two dollars a day, the people in Haiyan’s path stood out for their deep poverty. Many of the victims built their homes on the islands’ narrow coastal plains and lived off subsistence fishing and farming.
Haiyan destroyed or damaged 1.14 million houses, many of them made of cheap, flimsy materials that stood no chance against nature’s wrath.
FAILURE TO EVACUATE
The national government, through a geohazard mapping programme begun in 2006, had flagged most of the areas that were prone to the impacts of natural disasters.
However, local governments failed to evacuate many of the vulnerable population away from the danger zones, partly because they did not fully appreciate the threat and partly because they had not built enough shelters.
In the town of Hernani on Samar island, where Haiyan made the first of many landfalls, several families were wiped out by a storm surge when they left their flimsy shacks to ride out the storm at a low-lying school built along the coast, neighbours said.


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(COMBO) This combination photo created on November 5, 2018 shows a file photo taken on November 10, 2013 of residents walking amid debris and destroyed houses after teyphoon Haiyan struck in Tacloban, Leyte province, central Philippines (top) and a general view showing the same view of the corner streets of Burgos and Real in Tacloban City on November 1, 2018. - Typhoon Haiyan struck in the predawn darkness of November 8, 2013 as the then strongest typhoon to ever hit land, leaving more than 7,360 people dead or missing across the central Philippines. (Photo by Ted ALJIBE / AFP)

(COMBO) This combination photo created on November 5, 2018 shows a file photo taken on November 10, 2013 of residents resting outside a stadium used as an evacuation centre after typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban, Leyte province, central Philippines (top) and a general view of the astrodome in Tacloban City on November 1, 2018. - Typhoon Haiyan struck in the predawn darkness of November 8, 2013 as the then strongest typhoon to ever hit land, leaving more than 7,360 people dead or missing across the central Philippines. (Photo by Ted ALJIBE / AFP)

Destruction surrounds a Chinese temple in Tacloban City after Typhoon Haiyan struck. Photo: AFP

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More than 7,000 people are thought to have lost their lives in the Philippines’ worst storm on record. Here’s why it proved so deadly


The Philippines