Word: ketsana
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When rains slowed enough for people living in the central coast of Vietnam to venture outside and assess the damage, they were stunned at what they saw. In the night, Typhoon Ketsana had unleashed thousands of logs and cut timber, which had ridden the swollen rivers down the mountains, bashing anything and everything in the way. The lumber, much of which is believed to have been illegally harvested old-growth timber, clogged rivers and jammed under bridges and piers. For residents in the area who managed to harvest the wood, the rains last month brought riches. But Typhoon Ketsana also...
...most powerful to hit Vietnam in the past 50 years, killing at least 164 people. The highest number of deaths occurred in the mountainous province of Kon Tum, after heavy rains triggered flash flooding and landslides. At least two villages were completely buried. (See pictures of Ketsana's damage in Manila...
...added, many trees are also being felled legally to make way for hydroelectric plants and resettlement projects up in the mountains. This week, the Forestry Protection Department at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development ordered the provinces to determine how much of the wood washed downriver by Ketsana was illegally cut and how much of it was harvested from legal sources. In theory, each piece of legally cut old-growth timber should have a stamp of the forestry department...
...what a multitude of challenges has been unleashed upon the Asia-Pacific region in just a week's time. In late September, tropical storm Ketsana killed more than 160 people in Vietnam and nearly 300 in the Philippines, submerging 80% of Manila. Just hours before Sumatra was jolted, another earthquake triggered a tsunami that inundated the Samoan islands and Tonga, extinguishing some 180 lives. In the latest catastrophe, southern India was ravaged by some of the worst torrential rains in decades, killing around 300 people and leaving some 2 million others homeless. (See pictures of tsunami striking South Pacific...
...Padang - which scientists long predicted would be shaken by a killer quake because it sits astride one of the world's most active fault lines - was crowded with poorly built buildings that crumbled when the earth shuddered on Sept. 30. Similarly, in the Philippines, the vast flooding triggered by Ketsana was largely the result of insufficient drainage. In fact, the U.N. estimates that when equivalent populations in the Philippines and Japan endure the same number of tropical cyclones each year, 17 times more people perish in the Philippines than in Japan. The higher death tolls feed a vicious cycle: constantly...