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Johnny New
Professor Wallace
GEOG-1700
12/9/14
Natural Disasters Reflection
Before I began taking this class I knew very little about natural disasters. I had no idea
how they formed, or the likelihood of them taking place. Of all the natural disasters I knew least
about hurricanes so I took the group project as an opportunity to learn more about hurricanes and
ended up learning about much more. For the group project we choose to look at a specific
hurricane named Typhoon Haiyan/ Yolanda. This hurricane made landfall on the Philippines
November 5, 2013. Typhoon Haiyan or typhoon Yolanda if you are in Philippines was a
category 5 tropical cyclone the highest and strongest tropical cyclone to ever make landfall.
Typhoon Haiyan sustained wind speeds of 195 miles per hour, but had a max wind speed of 235
miles per hours. The death toll was significant as about 6,000 people died, and 1.9 million left
homeless.
While learning about Typhoon Haiyan I also learned about the Philippines. The
Philippines is located in the South China sea, and is near Vietnam. The Philippines is a group of
several thousand islands. Only seven percent of these islands are larger than one square mile; and
only one third of them have names. If you were to gather all the islands that make up the
Philippines the total land area would be comparable to that of Arizonas. The Philippines climate
is extremely susceptible to change. Although their temperature stays close to the same year
round. They often expierence sudden rainstorms. Their climate would be considered that of a

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tropical rainforest, and is extremely humid. Learning about the Philippines helped me to learn
why Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines so hard.
As I talked about earlier the Philippines is roughly the size of Arizona. Well the size of
Typhoon Haiyan is roughly that of Florida and Georgia. So Typhoon Haiyan completely
swallowed the Philippines chewed them up and spit them out. Secondly the storm just happened
to hit some of the most populated areas of the Philippines. A third reason why typhoon Haiyan
hit the Philippines so hard was the government of the Philippines has historically and to this day
had trouble with providing storm relief. The money that goes out for storm relief is extremely
scattered and unorganized some places get all the money and some get none. This might work up
until you get a super storm that envelopes your whole country. Typhoon Haiyan was able to do
extreme amounts of damage on the Philippines because of the reasons I mentioned.
In this class we had the opportunity to learn a lot more than just hurricanes. One of the
chapters I found the most interesting was the chapter 7 Mass wasting. Mass wasting is the rapid
downslope movement as rock or soil as coherent mass. This includes earth flows, rock falls,
landslides, and avalanches. There are multiple reasons why I found this chapter so interesting.
First off all at the time close by where I was living experienced a landslide. Another reason I
found this chapter so interesting is as an avid skier avalanches are something you hear a lot about
and need to be careful of. Learning about the different forces that are put on a slope that can
cause a landslide was something that I had never thought of. Examples of some of these forces
are the topography of the slope like how steep it is. Another example is the soil that is found on a
slope. If the soil is permeable meaning water can run through it, the slope is more likely to fall.
One thing you can do to try and prevent landslides is by using plants that would be found in that
our and planting them on the slope. Vegetation provides a protective surface that slows down

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erosion. Roots of plants also strengthen the soil on a slope. Learning about landslides was for me
the most interesting natural disaster we learned about. Overall taking this class gave me the
opportunity to learn more about how amazingly dead our earth can be. It also taught me about
that we need to respect the power that our earth has, because it has the power to end civilizations
and even species. Our world truly is an amazing and powerful place.

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