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Typhoon Bopha made landfall at dawn Tuesday packing 120-mile-per-hour winds in
the southern Philippines, which are usually spared the cyclones that are
a fact of life in the northern Philippines every year. The government
urged people to evacuate ahead of time, hoping to avoid a repeat of a
southern cyclone last year that killed 1,500 people, mostly from flash
flooding.
MANILA (AFP) – The Philippines, the world's third largest exporter of
bananas, lost a quarter of its crop in typhoon “Pablo” (Bopha), an
industry group said Thursday, adding that it has also likely spread a
destructive pest.
The Philippine Banana Growers and Exporters Association said the deadly
storm, which has so far killed 475 people, would also cost the industry
$318 million.
Executive director Stephen Antig said Bopha destroyed 10,000 hectares
(24,700 acres) of the country's 42,000 hectares of banana farms.
The winds and flash floods flattened wide swathes of the hillsides of
Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley provinces, the center of the
industry, he added.
And apart from the visible damage, Antig said there were fears that the
floods might have spread Panama Disease, which prevents the plant from
bearing any fruit before eventually killing it.
The bug then renders the affected areas unsuitable for replanting.
About 150,000 people depend on the banana industry in Compostela Valley
The GCP event was set for the full 24 hour day (UTC) of December 4,
corresponding to 24 hours beginning at 08:00 local time.
The result is Chisquare 86640.542 on 86400 df, for p = 0.281 and Z =
0.580.
It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny
statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish
signal from noise. This means that every "success" might be
largely driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real
signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can
be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of
similar analyses.
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