TACLOBAN, Philippines – Days after Super Typhoon Haiyan utterly demolished entire sections of the island nation of The Philippines, hundreds of American citizens admitted to having heard something or other about storm, and hoped everyone was alright.
“The Philippines! Right! Didn’t they get hit by two storms? One was Yolanda and the other had some weird, Asian-sounding name,” commented New York City resident Alice Sheppard, apparently unaware that Super Typhoon Haiyan and Super Typhoon Yolanda are the same storm.
“Yeah, I read about that on this one guy’s blog,” said Walter Hammand of Kansas City, Missouri. “Some big storm, right? Real nasty, just like Superstorm Sandy.”
“Superstorm Sandy? Really? Did they really say that?” asked Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross, in shock that the admittedly tragic events of Superstrom Sandy- which ultimately cost at least 286 people their life- was being compared to Super Typhoon Haiyan- which some officials are estimating may have killed over 10,000 people. “There are too many people dead. We have bodies in the water, bodies on the bridges, bodies on the side of the road.”
Many in the meteorological community have expressed surprise that more attention was not being paid to a storm which set records with wind gusts over 200 mph, and was so strong that the universal Dvorak scale used to measure storm strength had to be altered to accommodate the power of Haiyan.
“Honestly, I’m not sure what else a storm has to do to get any respect around here,” said Weather Channel meteorologist Paul Goodloe. “Maybe if it had tossed some sharks around or something.”
In Washington D.C., Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner expressed his sympathies over the tragic events. “Our hearts and minds go out to the people of the Philippines in this time of grief. But we take heart in knowing that as bad as things may seem over there, at least they don’t have to deal with the healthcare.gov website fiasco.”
