DEC 2009 Disasters Appeal for Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam: Validation Report

In just five days in 2009 between Typhoon Ketsana making landfall in the Philippines on 26 September and the first of two major earthquakes that struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the Asia-Pacific region abundantly lived up to its reputation as one of the world’s most testing crucibles of natural disaster.

As Ketsana, moving west, hit Vietnam, another undersea quake off the Samoan Islands triggered a tsunami that caused loss of life and damage there and in Tonga. Then shortly before the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal for Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam was launched, on Sunday 4 October, Typhoon Parma left a trail of destruction across the northern Philippines.

More than 1,100 people died in the Indonesian quake while Typhoon Ketsana left more than 460 dead in the Philippines alone.

It was an extraordinary sequence of events. The DEC’s chief executive, Brendan Gormley, described the number of disasters to have hit the region as ‘staggering’. Agency responses were underway but ‘seriously underfunded’, according to the DEC when it launched its appeal. ‘The nature of these disasters vividly recalls the horrors of 2004 tsunami,’ Gormley added. ‘Millions have seen the world they know ripped apart around them.’