“Amazing news coming out of the IDF field hospital,” Israeli Defense Force spokesperson Peter Lerner said via Twitter. “First baby delivered. The thankful mom named him ‘Israel.’”
IDF physicians delivered baby Israel five days after Typhoon Haiyan decimated his birthplace: Tacloban, Phillipines. What was a city of approximately 200,000 people is now wreckage-strewn marshland.
Baby Israel’s success story is one of many, as organizations like the IDF continue to erect field hospitals in the aftermath of the devastation.
Israel is one of numerous countries, including the U.S., who are scrambling to reach Haiyan’s victims.
Typhoon Haiyan made landfall on Nov. 8 as a category 5 storm. Measuring over 300 miles in diameter with sustained winds over 200 mph, Haiyan is possibly the largest storm ever measured.
The death toll is currently estimated to be slightly over 4,000, a number that is expected to rise due to food and clean water shortage. Looting and violence abound in the chaos left in the wake of the storm.
“The immediate effect of a storm like this is the loss of first responders,” said Gregory Gampfer, a Hurricane Katrina survivor, in an email interview with The Guilfordian. “Whenever destruction affects the infrastructure as well as first responders, the situation is at its worst.
“Haiyan mirrors Katrina in so many ways, most viscerally to me being the storm surge,” Gampfer said.
The storm surge from Haiyan was the predominant cause of devastation on the island of Leyte, where the worst damage is reported.
“Katrina had maximum sustained winds of 175 mph and produced 8-meter storm surges,” Carlos David reported for GMA News, a Filipino news outlet. “Katrina was one of the strongest storms to hit land, but it’s a far cry from Haiyan’s 200 mph winds.”
An island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the Philippines is bordered on all sides by water. The abundance of populated, low-lying islands and the lack of an operating infrastructure have crippled rescue efforts.
“The Philippines doesn’t have the luxury of big highways connecting all of the cities,” said Andy Linteau, an American citizen currently living in Manila, Philippines, in an email interview with The Guilfordian.
“We know a lot of countries are coming together to help the Philippines,” said Linteau. “But the aid is not reaching victims fast enough. Many Filipinos are frustrated with the slow efforts and blame the government.”
Added Sheila Nadal, a Filipino citizen in an email interview, “I don’t buy the government’s excuses. I think they weren’t prepared, but they should do everything they can, even if they don’t have a plan.
“The bottom line is that people need food and water; if they don’t get aid, they are going to die.”
The rally to support the Filipino people has made its way to Guilford College, where students assembled at The Hut on Nov. 14 for a candlelight vigil.
“The human trauma from a natural disaster like this crosses borders, cultures and languages,” said senior Sarah Welch. “If there is any good that comes from these tragedies, it is that people unite for the victims and put aside the petty differences that too often consume us.”
