Some Geography: For those who don't (or didn't) know. The Philippines are made up of a multitude of islands, but the three main island regions, are (from the top down) Luzon, Visayas & Mindanao.When tropical storm Ondoy (Ketsana) hit on the 26th of August, it cut across the middle and southern regions of Luzon. It confined most of its damage to the Manila Metro Region, an area with approximately 11.5 million people - and impacted the lives of around 4.3 million.
Typhoon Pepeng (Parma) cut across the north and east of Luzon on it's first pass, and then about 3 days later returned as a tropical storm and dumped a further record amount of rain on the north. Approximately 2.3 million have been impacted in these northern regions. But of greater concern is the fact that a great deal of the Philippines rice, corn and other crops come from these regions - and the harvest has been wiped out.
Until today the regions of Visayas and Mindanao have escaped - but today the Government has announced the pre-evacuation of large areas of low lying communities in these regions due to the heavy rain expected with an incoming tropical storm. Once again the concern is flooding and landslides. This strategy saved lives in the north when Pepeng was expected and once again the head of the National Disaster Council says, "it's better to be safe than sorry".
