John Jonas explains why the Philippines faces constant typhoons, floods, and volcanic activity. Typhoon Odette hit like a Category 5 hurricane, devastating Cebu and Negros. The country gets about 20 typhoons annually and sits on 27 active volcanoes, yet workers keep going, even continuing jobs from rooftops after floods.
Questions this video answers
January 20, 2022.
Typhoon Odette (called Typhoon Ray in the Philippines).
As equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.
About 20 per year.
27 active volcanoes.
Chapters
Why? Natural disasters happen regularly in the Philippines. So in December, Typhoon Odette, or Typhoon Ray, it's called Ray in the Philippines. Typhoon Odette hit the Philippines and decimated the central part of the country. So just so you know, typhoons rarely, like, they never hit the whole country. They hit a spot kind of like hurricanes in the US where it's going to hit Florida or it's going to hit Texas or it's going to hit Louisiana. So Typhoon Odette was kind of like Hurricane Katrina, where it just wrecked the cities of Cebu, Negros, a couple other places. It kind of went through the central Philippines and tore the area apart. And it was a Category 5. It would have been a Category 5 hurricane. A typhoon's a hurricane, but it's in a different geographic region, so they call it a typhoon. I've had people working for me since 2005. I've seen dozens of typhoons affect people that. That are working for me. I've never seen anything like this. Not like this one. So why is the Philippines such a. Such a hot spot for these natural disasters? It's the location. So they typically have, like, an average of 20 typhoons hit the country per year. Not that each of them does destruction like this, but they affect the country in some way. They also have 27 active volcanoes in the country, and every year they're getting an alert from at least one of them. So what's going on? Well, the Philippines is in the Pacific typhoon belt. And in the past, typhoons haven't been so strong, they haven't been so frequent, but with climate change, they have gotten more and more more frequent and more powerful. So every time a typhoon happens in the Pacific typhoon belt, you can pretty much guarantee it's going to affect the country in some way. Whether or not it causes destruction or problems is a different story. Whether that happens in the area where your OFS is, is a different story. Usually it's going to be somewhere else. Your OFS is to be in. On Mindanao or in Davao, and the typhoon's gonna hit the northern tip of the Philippines, and they're on the southern. And it's not. It's not going to affect them along with that. The Philippines is part of the Ring of Fire. It kind of goes. Let me see. I have a map here for myself. Hopefully you can see this. It kind of goes, like, around Australia and then follows Asia and up towards Siberia and across to Alaska and then down the Pacific coast, where there are, like, there are volcanoes and there's stuff coming out of the Earth and it causes volcanoes in these places. That's like Mount St. Helens in, in northwest US where this is just like the ring of where volcanoes are in the Philippines is right in the middle of it and it's an island nation. A lot of it's probably caused, I don't really know this caused by volcanoes. So they are just at more risk. But they're also kind of more resilient than, than other, other places because they're, they're so accustomed to it. The government has done a pretty good job of one, adding to prediction, two, notifying people and then three, of giving them evacuation options, places to go when problems are going to happen. So they do a pretty good job of dealing with the problem. Typhoon Odette was a unique one where it was so destructive. That's not super normal, but you'll regularly see flooding. A couple years ago there was a volcano that was affecting most of the country. Like the cloud flood from it was just massive, massive. And then people are affected and then sometimes they don't work super well for a little while. But often you'll find people are saying, hey, there's flooding, but I'm okay from it. Is what often you'll see. Or I mean I can't really tell you how many times that I have gotten emails that say sir, we're having flooding in my place and my house is under is like one point has 1.2 meters of water in it. But don't worry sir, I took my laptop and got up onto the roof so I'm safe and I saved my laptop and all my work. So I'll be back to work really soon. They're like, they're very conscientious. They recognize, yep, a flood's gonna happen. I'm gonna get back to work. Things are gonna get back to normal. We're gonna work it out. They help each other really well. It's definitely a disaster prone country, but they're also very resilient. They work hard, they get back to work. They're good at this. It's.
