The world of cascading disasters is upon us: the rise of the Age of Catastrophism

December 18, 2011 – PHILIPPINES – As a storm that killed more than 957 in the southern Philippines raged outside the store where she works, Amor Limbago worriedly called home to check on her parents, but their cell phones just kept ringing and later went dead. Limbago, 21, rushed home as soon as the flash floods receded and confirmed her worst fear: Her parents and seven other relatives were gone, swept away from their hut by the river. They had eagerly planned a small Christmas dinner in that hut just days earlier. “I returned and saw that our house was completely gone,” a weeping Limbago told The Associated Press from Cagayan de Oro city. “There was nothing but mud all over and knee-deep floodwaters.” Tropical Storm Washi blew away Sunday after devastating a wide swath of the mountainous region on Mindanao Island, which is unaccustomed to major storms. It killed at least 957 people and left more than 100 others missing, the Philippine Red Cross said. Most of the victims were asleep Friday night when flash floods cascaded down mountain slopes with logs and uprooted trees, swelling rivers. The late-season tropical storm turned the worst-hit coastal cities of Cagayan de Oro and nearby Iligan into muddy wastelands filled with overturned cars and broken trees. Most of the dead were children and women, Red Cross Secretary General Gwendolyn Pang said. –NPR 

Region hit by earthquake: The same ocean off the Coast of Mindanao Island that spawned Tropical Storm Washi was hit today by a 4.8 magnitude earthquake- an indication that disasters can and will soon strike in cascading clusters. The deep 4.8 magnitude earthquake struck along the seafloor of the Philippine Islands Arc which straddles the Philippine Trench. The Philippine archipelago lies in the deadly crosshairs of a web of subducting tectonic plates and sub-plates- most notably the Pacific and the Eurasian plates. A 4.6 magnitude earthquake also struck the Mediterranean region just south of Sicily. Earthquakes also struck Mexico, Panama, Pakistan, and Japan. –The Extinction Protocol  

Indonesian tragedy: More than 200 people were feared dead after a heavily overloaded boat packed mostly with Afghan and Iranian asylum-seekers sank off Indonesia en route to Australia, rescuers said. Australia’s government called the sinking “a terrible tragedy”, but came under pressure from campaign groups which said its tough approach to refugees was partly responsible for such disasters. –NZ Herald 

“And there shall be signs in the Sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexities (aporia– no way out); the sea and the waves roaring.” Luke 21:25

Sea and waves roaring: A drilling rig with 67 crew on board capsized and sank off Russia’s far eastern island of Sakhalin on Sunday while being towed through a winter storm, leaving more than 50 dead or missing in the icy Sea of Okhotsk. Emergency officials said the crew of an icebreaker and tugboat rescued 14 workers alive from the jack-up rig, the ‘Kolskaya’, which was operated by a Russian offshore exploration firm. They recovered four bodies from the water. “The Kolskaya keeled to its side … and sank within 20 minutes. The depth of the water at the site is 1,042 meters (3,400 feet),” Russia’s federal water transport agency said on its website. The jack-up rig, which has three support legs that can be extended to the ocean floor while its hull floats on the surface, was heading from Kamchatka to Sakhalin when it overturned in stormy conditions with a swell of up to six meters. –The Globe and Mail 

It is not just natural disasters happening more frequently- cause and effect are similarly being pulled through the drain at the end of time with accelerating force. Soon the world and the civilization we once knew in all its former luster will morph into an unrecognizable alien landscape.  –The Extinction Protocol