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THE DEATH TOLL from Typhoon Phanfone’s battering of the Philippines on Christmas Day has risen to 28, and will likely climb further, according to authorities.
The storm, with wind gusts of up to 200 kilometres per hour, swept across remote villages and popular tourist destinations in the central Philippines on Wednesday.
Authorities today confirmed 28 people had died, up from 16 yesterday, as information came in from badly hit areas where internet and mobile phone networks had been cut.
“The likelihood is present that the casualty count will still increase. We’re hoping against it,” national disaster agency spokesman Mark Timbal told AFP.
He said at least 12 people were still listed as missing.
Among those killed were several members of a family who drowned, a policeman electrocuted by a toppled post while patrolling and a man struck by a felled coconut tree.
The Philippines is a mostly Catholic nation, and Phanfone ruined or disrupted Christmas festivities for hundreds thousands of people.
The typhoon displaced tens of thousands living on the coast and low-lying areas who were forced to celebrate Christmas in evacuation centres.
Others missed family reunions, with plane and ferry services cancelled.
It also hit Boracay island, famed for its white sand beaches which draws more than a million tourists a year.
Coconut trees were uprooted on Boracay and windows in some resorts were blown in during the storm, and ferry services to and from the island were cut on Wednesday and yesterday.
However no one died on Boracay, and the damage was not on the scale of badly hit coastal towns elsewhere in the central Philippines.
The Philippines is the first major landmass facing the Pacific typhoon belt, and is hit by an average of around 20 storms a year.
Phanfone, locally named “Ursula”, is the 21st cyclone to hit the Philippines in 2019.
Many of the storms are deadly, and they typically wipe out harvests, homes and infrastructure, keeping millions of people perennially poor.
Though much weaker, Phanfone tracked a similar path as Super Typhoon Haiyan – the country’s deadliest storm on record which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing in 2013.
Phanfone blew out into the South China Sea yesterday morning.
It was tracking towards Vietnam today but forecast to weaken significantly into a low pressure area well before making landfall again.
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These projects are really good for kids. And teachers like that are worth their weight in gold.
@Marg murphy,
They’re not kids, they’re 18-22 year olds, and this looks like something you would see in the jungle.
Talk about dumbing down.
@eamon go back to bed
@Donnacha Bhoicaire,
You’re easily impressed, no wonder Ireland’s colleges have such low rankings.
GMIT is far behind MIT.
@eamonn. I should have read beyond the first line the article where I read “schoolchild”. I thought it was a primary school project.
@Marg murphy,
Yes, if it was young children who built it, then it would be impressive.
Eamon Mac I really feel sorry for you and your negative life. It’s very sad for you
You don’t really seem like someone people would like.
Tis a little on the exposed side for a winter classroom.
Good for cider parties in the summer though.
Good thinking.
Robinson Crusoe would be proud of you.. !!
You can’t be doom and gloom all the time, sometimes a bit of been positive can lift you up.
Agreed
Housing problem solved, no morgage.
Well you can’t beat there optimism about the weather!
Fantastic to see how rapidly Mayo civilisation is advancing.
This is simply awesome. Yes it’s not brick and mortar boring thinking that would leave a huge carbon footprint. It’s out of the box thinking that encourages more out of the box thinking. I remember looking out glass windows of lecture rooms on a nice sunny day wishing for something like this. The fact that brick and mortar buildings are assumed to be a “continuous improvement ” from such structures as this makes one think about construction methods and it’s success could probably be measured by the pride that all involved have when they look at it. Large scale team building exercise with a functional result that can be used by many. Not all will see but not all have creative ability and less have creative ability with follow through. Congratulations to you all.
Thank you for your comments Croistoir. The project is part of an ongoing Green Campus initiative under Local Agenda 21 funding. The students explored the principles of place based education whilst constructing the classroom. The module that students were taking which this project is part of was sustainable environmental management. If you require any further information please contact me via the Facebook page.
Aodan
There’s an awful lot of ar$eholery in this thread.
See if you can spot who I’m on about.
I’ll post the answer in a short while. :-)
Eamon MacGowan?
Too easy
Well at least it’s air -conditioned!
Great to be able to do this without planning permission, wheelchair access, fire restrictions etc……..
It’s part of an environmental sustainability management module, exploring the principles of placed based education. It for the entire community not just the college but for local national schools and youth organisations.
Amazing health & safety has not shut it down !
They’ve been watching too much Bear Grylls.
I hope they wont be given the job of designing social housing.We might freeze to death!
Yeah wow fair play, threw it together as a wee little project!
When the sad fact remains that millions of children around the world do actually have their whole schooling in such lacking facilities due to poverty.
This is so Irish, any old halfhearted effort will do.
Shure it’s grand!
Relax eamon I’m sure it was meant as an exercise to get some youngsters out of a lecture hall and thinking outside the box, no one, well except Gerard, was suggesting this was the solution to all the worlds ills
Get some help Eamon. You appear to have a major malfunction. Well don’t gmit
Racist comments, to me, are suggestive of a certain tardiness with regard to the evolutionary process.
It doesn’t look a bit impressive to me.
A bit naff.
Students should be out protesting and throwing stones at the police.
Not wasting their time building such ridiculous childish tree houses.
P.S
I built a better tree-house than that when I was 9 years old.
Erm, can I ask is it hurricane proof?
Are you thinking of teaching a class there during one of our frequent hurricanes?
I could be cynical and point out how hedge schools came into my mind when I first saw this article. The country was under an administration that cared little for the common people at that point. Some things don’t change
have your say