In the Last week most south-east-asian countries on the pasific coasts have been battered by the typhoons Ketsana and Parma. Next to that Indonesia has been hit by 2 major eartquakes (7.6 and 6.8) and Samoa by a tsunami.
The Philippines first got hit by typhoon Ketsana. Resulting in by 295 death and 39 still missing. And leaving over 400.000 people homeless.
Ketsana was shortly followed by typhoon Parma, resulting in: 17 deaths, 61,600 metric tons of rice destroyed, 74,373 hectares of rice-growing areas and 6,000 tons of corn, fruits and vegetables. With windspeeds of 195kph to 230kph.
Total financial damages up to 96 milion USD.
After the Philippines, Ketsana struck Vietnam. This resulted in 159 deaths, 112 milion USD in crop losses, 180.000 destroyed homes and 50.000 hectares of agricultural land destroyed. There also where miles of railroad tracks washed away or destroyed.
(on average, vietnam gets 6.4 typhoons a year, this is the 9th and there some more months in the season).
Following Vietnam, Ketsana hit Cambodia and Laos.
In Cambodia the death-toll topped 17 and 1519 people lost their homes. Cambodia lost 50.000 of rice paddies, 40km of road was destroyed and 160 irrigation systems.
In Laos 24 people died and 135 people are still missing. 37.500 are homeless due to the storm. The water of the sekong river had risen 13-15 meters, arround 14 villages have been flooded.
In most affected areas in these countries the water levels haven’t dropped yet or are even still rising. Support organisations are working hard on saving and supporting people, but due to the damages to infrastructure this has turned out quite difficult.
In the mean time, in Samoa and Tonga where hit my a big tsunami of about 7.5m in height which swept land inwards upto 1.5 km. In total arround 170 people died and thousands where turned homeless.
Next to all this, Sumatra (Indonesia) got hit by 2 earthquakes, one of a 7.6 and one of 6.8 magnitude. arround 1600 people did not survive the quake, but some hunderds more are still at risk due to famine. arround 38.000 homes where damaged, leaving thousands of people homeless.
This leaves the south-east-asian area quite battered and the typhoon season isn’t over yet for the comming months. Typhoons Parma and Super Typhoon Melor are still in the area. Threatening Japans and the Philipines.