Looting Hits Phillippines Amid Widespread Damage from Supertyphoon Haiyan

At the Wall Street Journal, "Looting on Storm-Hit Island Prompts Calls for Martial Law."

Also, "Philippines Left Reeling in Wake of Storm":

ORMOC CITY, Philippines—Supertyphoon Haiyan left a central region of the Philippines in tatters, as authorities struggled to verify the number of dead and looting began in one of the hardest-hit cities.

In the coastal city of Tacloban, people ransacked shops, while food and medical stations were swamped by those in need. Rescue workers dug through rubble and mud in search of survivors.

President Benigno Aquino III said the city would be placed under a state of emergency to allow the central government to speed up relief and reconstruction efforts.

The typhoon, known locally as Yolanda, hit the Philippines on Friday, with fierce winds and heavy rains shredding homes, uprooting trees and flinging cars and boats.

The storm weakened as it made landfall in northeastern Vietnam early Monday, causing widespread power outages and triggering heavy rains that authorities feared may cause floods and landslides. Haiyan was expected to move inland toward the border with China.

Mr. Aquino said late Sunday the government was trying to verify the number of dead. The official toll stood at 229 but was expected to climb substantially.

The Philippine National Red Cross said the death toll could run into the thousands, adding that it was difficult to calculate the figure because the storm left bodies scattered over wide areas.

Continue reading.

At Least 10,00 Feared Dead in Philippines Typhoon

At LAT, "Typhoon may have killed nearly 10,000 in Philippines."

At at WSJ, "Thousands Feared Dead in the Philippines in Wake of Typhoon: Red Cross and Authorities Fear Toll Could Rise to the Thousands":

MANILA—The Philippine National Red Cross said Sunday that the death toll from supertyphoon Haiyan could run into the thousands, adding that it is difficult to perform the grim calculations because the massive storm left bodies scattered over wide areas.

Photographs and video taken Sunday in Tacloban—a city especially hard hit—showed dead people being pulled from rubble and mud, cars and boats tossed into piles and homes shredded.

"This is a monumental disaster. As of now, there's no time to count the bodies. The dead bodies are not in one place like what happened in Ormoc," Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross, told The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Gordon, a former senator, was referring to the 1991 flash floods caused by a typhoon in Ormoc City on the island of Leyte which claimed more than 5,000 lives—the most on record caused by a storm in the Philippines.

Health Assistant Secretary Eric Tayag, who was with a medical team deployed to set up three mobile hospitals in Tacloban, said the government is considering digging a mass grave to bury the dead there.

The National Disaster and Risk Reduction Management Council said the typhoon has affected more than 4.5 million people in the 36 provinces in the central Philippines and in the southern part of the main island of Luzon. It said more than 477,000 people were displaced by Haiyan and 400,000 of them are in evacuation centers.

Haiyan, locally known as Yolanda, pounded three dozen provinces in the central Philippines and the southern section of the main island of Luzon with gale-force winds that stirred five-yard-high storm surges that flooded coastal towns.

Philippine Leader Fears 'Substantially' Higher Death Toll

At the Wall Street Journal, "Typhoon Death Toll to Rise 'Substantially': Philippine President: Haiyan Is the Strongest Tropical Cyclone to Strike the Philippines Since 1991":

MANILA—Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said Saturday that the death toll from supertyphoon Haiyan will be "substantially more" than officials have so far confirmed, a grim prediction as eyewitnesses reported bodies being pulled from rubble in one town where cars and trees had been tossed about.

Speaking at a televised news conference, the president declined to answer questions seeking an estimate of the number of people who had been killed.

The confirmed count is four, but one city—Tacloban, which has 220,000 residents—was hit especially hard, and one government official said at least 100 were dead. The Philippine National Red Cross said Saturday it received reports suggesting around 1,000 people died in Tacloban and about 200 in neighboring Samar province.

"It is only an estimate from the field, not validated," said Philippine Red Cross Secretary General Gwen Pang.

A Hong Kong-based cameraman and storm chaser who has been filming typhoons for nine years reported seeing dead bodies and looting in Tacloban.

Enlarge Image

Tacloban city, in Leyte province, central Philippines Saturday. Associated Press

"There are people pulling bodies out of the rubble, basically," said James Reynolds from Cebu on Saturday.

Mr. Reynolds said he saw people looting drugstores and electronics stores.

"It's a lawless situation," he said. "It's only going to get worse because people are going to get hungrier or thirstier, and there's not enough aid getting in."

Supertyphoon Haiyan, which had the strength of a Category 5 hurricane, is headed to Vietnam, where it is expected to make landfall in the morning.

A mother and her son walked under damaged electric cables after super Typhoon Haiyan battered Tacloban city. Reuters

The typhoon hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippines on Friday, with its heavy rain and winds uprooting trees, shredding homes, and causing five-yard high storm surges that flooded coastal towns.

"The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami," said Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, head of the United Nations Disaster Assessment Coordination team.

"This is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like tumble weeds, and the streets are strewn with debris ," he said, adding that relief efforts will be challenging because roads between the airport and the central city were "completely blocked." The U.N. team arrived in Tacloban on Saturday.

Continue reading.

Desperate Minutes in School Razed by Tornado

At WSJ, "Oklahoma Tornado: Long Minutes of Desperation Inside School Razed by Storm."

And about the erroneous death toll, at LAT, "Chaos after tornado led to double reporting in death toll."

Rescuers Search Into Night for Moore Schoolchildren

At the Oklahoman, "Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin confirmed that bodies of children had been found at Plaza Towers Elementary School. She also confirmed that bodies of adults had been found on the school lawn."

And at the New York Times, "Vast Oklahoma Tornado Kills at Least 91."

#PrayForOklahoma

From Michelle Malkin:

HOPE. MT @micahjmurray Another beautiful picture of a child rescued from the rubble. #PrayForOklahoma @ap twitter.com/micahjmurray/s…

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) May 21, 2013

Dozens of children are still unaccounted for, reports Fox News. Please pray.

Dozens Killed in Monster Oklahoma Tornado

CBS News is reporting "at least 51 dead," on Twitter.

And at ABC News, "'Horrific' Tornado Tears Through Oklahoma, 51 Dead."

I'll have more..

Camarillo Springs Fire Reaches Pacific Coast Highway in Ventura County

This has been the big story on local news today. It's hot weather with Santa Ana conditions.

At the Los Angeles Times, "California wildfires: Springs fire reaches PCH in Ventura County."

More at KABC-TV Los Angeles, "Camarillo fire at 8K acres, new evacs ordered."

The Real Groundhogs of New York City

This is a funny story, at NYT, "In Burrows Across the City, It’s Groundhog Day Year Round":

Staten Island Chuck lives the pampered life one would expect of a celebrity groundhog, lounging in a heated nursery at the Staten Island Zoo and noshing on sweet potatoes as the world outside shivers.

But as Chuck gears up to make a weather prediction Saturday alongside heavily gloved handlers and politicians, his wild counterparts occupy the proverbial other side of the tracks.

Meet the Real Groundhogs of New York City, a population of perhaps a few dozen scattered throughout city parks, botanical gardens and cemeteries, some so isolated from any other groundhog community that naturalists do not know for sure how they got there.

Right now, of course, they are sound asleep, as groundhogs are meant to be in midwinter (the greenhouse conditions in Chuck’s lair throw his hibernation software out of whack). When the weather warms, though, they emerge from burrows all over: Astoria Park in Queens, Conference House Park at the bottom of Staten Island and Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx.

Continue reading.

Melissa Frost's Battle for Her House

Here's a story to make you angry and frustrated, with similarities to the right's ongoing Brett Kimberlin saga.

See Instapundit, "NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED: True Story: Woman Invites Hurricane Sandy Refugee to Stay With Her, He Gets Violent And Refuses to Leave."

The woman, Ms. Frost, has a Tumblr set up for her defense fund, "MJF'S BATTLE FOR HER OWN DAMN HOUSE."

There be some valuable lessons for would-be humanitarians.

Sandy, Katrina, and the Pro-Government Party

A devastating commentary, from Mona Charen, at National Review:

Just a few days after Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, the New York Times’s Paul Krugman crowed triumphantly about the federal government’s response to the disaster. “After Katrina the government seemed to have no idea what it was doing; this time it did. And that’s no accident: the federal government’s ability to respond effectively to disaster always collapses when antigovernment Republicans hold the White House, and always recovers when Democrats take it back.”

What a fairy tale. Mature adults understand that earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are unfortunate facts of life. They further know that government agencies are, by their very nature, slow and lumbering animals.

Krugman was right about one thing, though. Sandy would not be Obama’s Katrina, because the press is on his side. President Obama parachuted into New Jersey after the storm and declared that he would not tolerate “red tape” or “bureaucracy” by the government. He then hopped back aboard Air Force One and resumed his campaign schedule. His admirers, including, alas, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and the besotted Krugman, swooned.

Six days after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, President Bush’s presidency had been declared a failure and a disgrace. It was all FEMA’s fault, we were given to understand, and, by extension, Bush’s fault. It wasn’t the incompetence of local and state officials, or the levee collapse (a failure, by the way, that impartial observers lay at the feet of another government agency going back years, the Army Corps of Engineers). No, within a few days of the storm’s impact, Bush was an enemy of the people.

RTWT.

'I voted to fix it, you voted for the stupid short sighted @ssh0les who broke it...'

Here's this must-read ass-stomping comment at Small Dead Animals:

Featured Comment:

Davenport said: "I'm going to head off The Phantom here, who doubtless will show up shortly with some rant about how this is all FEMA's fault'."

I love it:

Do you want to know why the power is STILL off on Long Island, Davenport? Read this here: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Sandy-LIPA-Outages-Power-Long-Island-Defense-Military-178115341.html

In it you will find reference to a report from 2006, SIX YEARS AGO, which found that Long Island Power Authority had not done the basic maintenance required to secure the power grid from weather damage. The maintenance they're talking about here is tree cutting mostly, and replacing bad power poles.

I lived in New York in the 1990's. I could have written that report. The f-ing power went off every time it snowed because they didn't cut trees and the trees ripped the lines down. They also didn't plow the roads, but that's a story for another day.

You want to know why they don't cut the f-ing trees Davenport? It isn't because they are stupid, it isn't because they don't know, it isn't because private enterprise is inherently corrupt, it isn't even because union workers are a bunch of rent-seeking layabouts. Its because every time they go to cut down a tree, some local Greenies get up a petition or a court order to make them stop. So they stop. So the trees break and knock down the power lines. Same thing all over the North East until you get up into snow country, where even the f-ing tree huggers know better.

Well -this- time it all came home to roost the same day, and every overhanging branch from New Jersey to Connecticut took out a line.

UPDATE: My good friend Norm Gersman comments: "This post is absolutely incorrect. I live in an area as leftie as any. our trees by the wires are annually cut , and look ridiculous, no one says a bad word because it must be done. the present problem of down wires was caused mostly by falling trees a good distance from the wires. what are we going to do? Clear cut every tree for 100 feet on either side of the wires?"

Norm's in Great Neck, which is the focus of this story cited by the writer at SDA, "Officials Want Military to Take Over Power Restoration on Long Island":

LIPA [Long Island Power Authority], which had earlier set a goal of restoring 90 percent of all customers by Wednesday, has declined to respond to the withering criticism. Officials say the company was focused on restoring power and not engaging in a debate with politicians.

Newsday reported Friday that LIPA was warned as long ago as 2006 that it was not prepared to handle a major storm, that it badly needed to replace outdated technology and did not keep up with critical maintenance.

Among the issues the utility was warned about include a 25-year-old computer system not capable of tracking outages, and failures to keep up with basic tasks like replacing rotting poles and trimming trees near power lines, the paper said.

Well, LIPA isn't taking interviews at the moment, so I'll come back to this debate, LOL!