ASSOCIATED PRESS                                        NOV. 9. 2014

 MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine military said Sunday that 108 of its peacekeepers have tested negative for Ebola in Liberia, but that they will still be shipped to a small island in Manila Bay when they fly home this week for 21 more days of quarantine....

The Philippines has decided to halt the deployment of its troops to the West African nation amid the deadly Ebola outbreak there, ending more than a decade of peacekeeping work under the United Nations.

Read complete story
https://news.yahoo.com/homebound-filipinos-troops-liberia-ebola-free-055443426.html

Japan Meteorological Agency - http://www.jma.go.jp/en/typh/

gdacs.org - July 14, 2014

Tropical Cyclone RAMMASUN-14 can have a medium humanitarian impact based on the Maximum sustained wind speed and the affected population and their vulnerability.

Updated: this report is based on advisory number 18.

• Tropical Cyclone Hurricane/Typhoon > 74 mph (maximum wind speed of 167 km/h)
• from 14/07/2014 00:00 UTC to 18:00
• Population affected by Category 1 (120 km/h) wind speeds or higher is 35.6 million
• Vulnerability: High

(CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION)

CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM THE JOINT TYPHOON WARNING CENTER (JTWC)

CLICK HERE - GDACS Tropical Cyclones - Joint Research Centre

CLICK HERE - Tropical Cyclone Information - Japan Meteorological Agency

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8IM5-mVZfk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

imkiran.com - March 24, 2014

The ‘Give Them Light’ project is about creating awareness into the lives of people living without basic needs which every human deserves. Let’s shed some light on to them so it will help create the connection between societies. We want to give them something that could help lighten their burden for those living in the dark. “Something simple, like a light, can put a smile on someone’s face”.

http://www.imkiran.com/givethemlight/

Nokero - http://nokero.com/

Their grief turned into anger the following day when they joined a march that they now want to replicate in different areas across the country.

Series of protests vs Aquino govt set nationwide

manilastandardtoday.com - by Ronald Reyes
January 28, 2014

SURVIVORS of super typhoon Yolanda and their supporters on Monday vowed to stage more protests to express their indignation at the slow government response to their needs, after last Friday’s “People Surge” demonstration gathered more than 12,000 people in Tacloban City.

“This is a People Surge – a swelling of the people demanding justice for Yolanda victims and asserting their right to food, housing, livelihood and social services,” said Sister Edita Eslopor, OSB, chairperson of People Surge, an alliance working for the victims of typhoon Yolanda.

. . . This is just the first of a series of protests that will fill the streets of major cities across the country in indignation of the Aquino administration,” Eslopor added.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

A resident stands on the roof of his home that is submerged in heavy flooding brought by tropical depression ''Agaton'', in Butuan city on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao January 21, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Erik De Castro

reuters.com - by Erik de Castro - January 21, 2014

(Reuters) - Emergency workers evacuated thousands of people across the southern Philippines on Tuesday, including many already made homeless by a typhoon in November, after three days of rain flooded towns and farmland.

Hundreds of survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall, were forced to flee by tropical depression "Agaton" after emergency shelters were damaged or destroyed on the eastern central island of Samar.

Tents collapsed under the weight of the rain and emergency plastic sheets have been torn away, humanitarian agency Oxfam said.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

But between residents who don't understand the dangers and political infighting, that may be difficult.

Pel Tecson, mayor since May of Tanauan town, Leyte island, the Philippines, looks out from his battered town hall balcony over Tanauan, smashed by a Typhoon Haiyan. The city council passed a resolution Monday making a non-build zone from the shoreline to 50 meters inland. The need for relocation of vulnerable communities is the big lesson to be learned from the experience, Tecson said.  (Photo: Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY)

usatoday.com - by Calum MacLeod - November 23, 2013

. . . Despite small signs that this area is recovering, life remains far from normal for countless Filipinos who have struggled through days of horror and hunger. More than 5,000 people died in the typhoon, and hundreds more are missing. The survivors are wondering when they'll have their lives back. . .

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

RESEARCH - PNAS - Reduction of cholera in Bangladeshi villages by simple filtration - January 14, 2003

The New York Times - by Abigail Zuger, M.D. - September 26, 2011

Rural Bangladeshi women often pour sweetened drinks through a piece of sari cloth to get rid of leaves, insects and other visible debris. But disease-causing micro-organisms are thousands of times smaller than the pores in the fabric and slip right through.

About 10 years ago, a team of researchers in Maryland and Bangladesh came up with a ridiculously simple solution: Wash and fold the sari. Four thicknesses of laundered sari fabric, with its loosened, roughened cotton fibers, will strain out most of the microscopic plankton in water. In water contaminated by cholera, enough bacilli are attached to plankton for the quantity of cholera in filtered water to drop by more than 99 percent.

http://www.slideshare.net/YALE-ESF8--VMOC

In light of Typhoon Haiyan, the Yale-Tulane ESF #8 Planning and Response Program has produced special reports for current efforts. To access these reports, click here.

The Yale-Tulane ESF #8 Program is a multi-disciplinary, multi-center, graduate-level program designed to produce ESF #8 planners and responders with standardized skill sets that are consistent with evolving public policy, technologies, and best practices. The group that produced this summary and analysis of the current situation are graduate students from Yale and Tulane Universities. It was compiled entirely from open source materials.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

                                               (CLICK ON MAP IMAGE BELOW TO ENLARGE)

ECHO Daily Maps - http://ercportal.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Maps/Daily-maps-catalogue#

Boys walked on Sunday with sacks of rice in front of a damaged church in Jaro, where, one official said, no aid has arrived.  Jes Aznar for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Keith Bradsher - November 17, 2013

JARO, Philippines — Even as a major international aid effort has begun to take hold around the coastal city of Tacloban, the situation grimly differs just a few miles inland, where large numbers of injured or sick people in interior villages shattered by Typhoon Haiyan more than a week ago have received no assistance.

Well away from the coastal storm surge areas where most of the death toll occurred on the Philippines island of Leyte, the picture is still one of utter devastation — in this case from Haiyan’s record winds.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

star-tides.net

The strength of STAR-TIDES is in its knowledge-sharing rather than as an operations center or a logistics hub.   We would like to do what is most useful in providing reach-back support.  Below are the latest updates from 4 broad areas (Equipment, Communications, Coordination, and Documentation):

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

A corpse was carried on Thursday to a mass grave in Tacloban, the city of 220,000 that was flattened by the storm that made landfall a week ago. The number of dead still remains uncertain.  Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Rick Gladstone - November 14, 2013

The aftermath of the Philippines typhoon is now threatening the country with outbreaks of debilitating and potentially fatal diseases, including some thought to have been nearly eradicated, because of a collapse in sanitation, shortages of fresh water and the inability of emergency health teams to respond quickly in the week since the storm struck, doctors and medical officials said Thursday.

Illnesses including cholera, hepatitis, malaria, dengue fever, typhoid fever, bacterial dysentery and others that thrive in tropical, fetid environments, where sewage and water supplies intermingle, could form what doctors fear is the disaster’s second wave.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Emotional Speech by Philippine Delegate: Excerpts from a statement about Typhoon Haiyan by Naderev Saño, the chief representative of the Philippines at the Warsaw Climate Change Conference. Radek Pietruszka/European Pressphoto Agency

nytimes.com - by Henry Fountain and Justin Gillis - November 11, 2013

The typhoon that struck the Philippines produced an outpouring of emotion on Monday at United Nations talks on a global climate treaty in Warsaw, where delegates were quick to suggest that a warming planet had turned the storm into a lethal monster.

Olai Ngedikes, the lead negotiator for an alliance of small island nations, said in a statement that the typhoon, named Haiyan, which by some estimates killed 10,000 people in one city alone, “serves as a stark reminder of the cost of inaction on climate change and should serve to motivate our work in Warsaw.” . . .

. . . “What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness; the climate crisis is madness,” Mr. Saño said. “We can stop this madness right here in Warsaw.”