Amazon888 Blog

Twenty typhoons annually visit the country bringing heavy rainfall that causes flooding, landslides and mudslides. These in turn destroy valuable agricultural land and settlements, and claim many lives every year.

Other hazards such as El Nino aggravate the extent of these damages, which sum up to an annual loss of 0.5% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Eastern Visayas, mainly consisting of the islands of Leyte, Samar and Biliran, is one of the most disaster prone regions in the Philippines, experiencing some of the worst typhoons ever recorded in Philippine history, killing over a thousand people through a mudslide in Feb., 2006, and over 6,000 people due to typhoons back in 1990-1991.

Disaster preparedness is one of the weaknesses of the region and for the most part, it is still seen as emergency management. The government and the local people are neither sufficiently prepared nor well equipped to implement preventive measures and