“Davao City (Mindanao Examiner / Dec. 22, 2012) – More than 200 corpses were buried in a mass grave on Saturday in Compostela Valley province in the southern Philippines, as the search for those still missing from the deadly typhoon Bopha still continues.
“The bodies were already decomposing and needed to be buried to prevent the spread of diseases in the town of New Bataan, one of the hardest hit by the typhoon that ravaged Mindanao on December 4. xxx”
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From Agence France Presse
“300,000 still homeless after Typhoon Bopha: IFRC
“Some 300,000 people remain homeless in the Philippines following a deadly typhoon earlier this month, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said Friday.
“The IFRC said urgent humanitarian assistance was needed to help around 200,000 of those affected by Typhoon Bopha — the deadliest storm to have struck the Philippines this year, killing more than 1,000 across the archipelago.xxx”
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From sunstar.com.ph
“Integrated approach pushed to rebuild Pablo-hit areas
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“It (Minda)recorded a total value loss in production of P25.8 billion due to damages that cover total or partial destruction of physical assets existing in the affected area. Its monetary value is expressed in terms of replacement costs according to prices prevailing just before the event.
“Minda also noted the expected value losses of P9.6 billion for 2013, which cover employment (direct and indirect), businessmen’s income, losses from rental of lands and other related services.
“ “It bears to point out that the hard hit areas of Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental are among the top producing agricultural provinces of the country, especially banana, coconut and other high value commodities,” according to Minda.
“It added that the next two to three years of rehabilitation and reconstruction will certainly need to have a strong focus on reviving the agri-industry strength of these areas to provide greater employment opportunities and catch-up growth.”
Related article published in inquirer.net today (see previous blog post below: “Follow Phivolcs on Twitter– IF it opens a Twitter account — eywver” )
“Sorry, but Phivolcs is not on Twitter By: DJ Yap Philippine Daily Inquirer 1:32 am | Monday, September 3rd, 2012
“For netizens who wanted quick information about Friday’s earthquake, it was a night of frustration of seismic proportions.
“After a 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck off the country’s eastern coast on Friday night, netizens hit the keys to access the website of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) for confirmation of the frenzy on the network news.
“But if the Pacific-wide tsunami warning that the temblor had spurred had been right, they would have been swept away without seeing even a flicker from the Phivolcs website.
“The Phivolcs page wouldn’t load.
“People tried to look for Phivolcs on Twitter, and failed to find it.
“CNN World Weather anchor Mari Ramos was one of those who had been looking and ended up tweeting in frustration: “Is PHIVOLCS on twitter? I can’t get into their webpage… #PHTrenchQuake #Philippines.”
“Sorry, but Phivolcs has no Twitter account.
“Asked for an explanation, Phivolcs Director Renato Solidum said a lot of Internet users tried to access the agency’s website after the powerful quake struck, but its bandwidth could not accommodate the huge traffic.
“ “The truth is we have a large bandwidth, much larger than the regular bandwidth, but that bandwidth is shared with our own people,” Solidum told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
“Worse, Solidum said Phivolcs IT officers detected a “flooding attack” from unknown sources that blocked people from reaching the site and caused error messages to pop up instead.
“ “We still don’t know where the flooding attack came from but right now, we will try to increase our capacity and put up mirror sites, so people can be diverted to the mirror sites without affecting our operations,” Solidum said.
“ “As for a Phivolcs Twitter account, he said the agency did not have enough staff members to provide updates on social media.
“ “What we do is we give the updates to the concerned agencies, which then post the updates on Twitter,” he said.
“Solidum said the Phivolcs was more focused on the real-time flow of information to the concerned agencies, including the Office of Civil Defense, which would issue advisories and warnings to residents of areas an earthquake had struck.” (PDI, today’s issue)
