November 10, 2013

Typhoon Haiyan context

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There are reports that as many as 10,000 people may have died on the Philippine island of Leyte on Friday, drowned in the storm surge or killed by collapsing buildings.

Leyte is roughly comparable in size and population to the Auckland Region (about 40% larger). Fewer than 8000 people died in Auckland in all of 2012.

A disaster

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »

Comments

  • avatar
    Pierre Malan

    Hi Thomas,

    Sympathies go out to the Philippines and their people- this is truly a massive disaster.

    However, are you sure as to your comparison with Auckland? If Auckland has a population of 1.5M, and 8,000 died last year, that indicates a life expectancy of 187.5 years (1.5M/8k, assuming stable population). Have I missed something here?

    The 8,000 seems low by comparison with the populations – is there a source on this data?

    Again, it is not a subject to make light of, but the numbers dying in the Auckland Region don’t seem to stack up.

    10 years ago

    • avatar
      Thomas Lumley

      It’s in Table 3, here at Stats NZ: 7665. There’s lot of young migration to Auckland: we aren’t close to equilibrium.

      10 years ago

      • avatar
        Pierre Malan

        Thanks for that – makes sense now. I see that live births are something like 3x the death rate … an indication of the population boom that is going on.

        10 years ago

  • avatar
    Thomas Lumley

    Donation links at the Herald

    I’d also add Medicins Sans Frontieres, who don’t solicit targeted donations, but who are already in the Philippines, with more people and equipment on the way.

    10 years ago