In the wake of Super Typhoon Fung-wong—known locally as Uwan—the Philippines is once again confronting the sobering reality of its status as the world’s most disaster-prone nation. According to UNICEF, more than 1.7 million Filipino children have been battered by the storm, which has left a trail of destruction across 16 regions and placed millions at heightened risk of disease, malnutrition, and interrupted education. The typhoon, the strongest to strike the country in 2025, has affected over 5.17 million people and killed more than 250, according to government figures and reports from The Independent.
“Children and their families are barely climbing out of one crisis before another strikes, pushing them back to zero,” said UNICEF Philippines Representative Kyungsun Kim in a statement issued on November 14, 2025. The comment captures the exhaustion and despair felt by many in the archipelago, where climate-related and geophysical disasters have become an all-too-familiar part of life.
The devastation wrought by Typhoon Uwan is especially acute for the country’s youngest citizens. UNICEF reports that homes, schools, and health centers have been either damaged or destroyed, forcing families into crowded evacuation centers. Over 15,000 classrooms have suffered damage, and more than 900 public schools are now serving as makeshift shelters for displaced families. The ripple effects on children’s health and education are immediate and severe: respiratory diseases threaten those packed into temporary housing, malnutrition looms as food systems are disrupted, and the abrupt halt to schooling jeopardizes learning for a generation already battered by previous crises.
In response, UNICEF has mobilized emergency supplies from warehouses in Manila and Cotabato to speed aid delivery to those most in need. The organization is distributing Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food, therapeutic milk, and breastfeeding kits to ensure that children suffering from malnutrition continue to receive treatment. Joint assessments with the Philippine government and other partners are underway to determine urgent needs in water, sanitation, hygiene, health, nutrition, education, protection, and social protection.
The scale of the crisis is staggering, but it is not isolated. Just days before Typhoon Uwan made landfall, Typhoon Kalmaegi also struck the Philippines, compounding the devastation. As reported by The Independent, the back-to-back storms have displaced more than one million people and have left authorities scrambling to assist survivors amid flattened structures and flooded roads, particularly in Luzon, the country’s main island in the north.
The relentless onslaught of storms has not gone unnoticed by meteorologists. Jason Nicholls, lead international forecaster with AccuWeather, expressed concern that the Philippines “is not out of the water yet for another tropical impact or two.” He noted, “In the last five days they got hit twice, and they had a couple impacts even in October, so that’d be an area there would be a little bit of concern for.”
What’s fueling this barrage of storms? Scientists point to the La Nina weather system, which has recently taken hold in the Pacific. La Nina, the cooler counterpart to El Nino, typically brings with it heavy rains and a turbocharged hurricane season. During La Nina, sea surface temperatures in certain parts of the Central Pacific Ocean cool by at least 0.5°C (0.9°F) compared to normal. This cooling weakens wind shear—a phenomenon that usually hampers the formation and strengthening of hurricanes and typhoons—thus creating more favorable conditions for these destructive storms to form and intensify.
Dr. Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), explained to The Independent, “When we’ve had La Nina events in the past, we’ve seen more likely than not record levels of rainfall in eastern Australia, in the Indo Pacific, in southern Africa, in northern South America and southern central America.” She added that the current La Nina event is “a very mild event, so [the sea surface temperatures] are just below average, rather than significantly below average. And the models also suggest that it will be quite a short-lived event as well.”
Despite its relative mildness, the current La Nina has already had significant consequences. It contributed to the low-wind shear environment that allowed Typhoon Uwan to devastate the Philippines, and experts warn that the threat is far from over. Mr. Nicholls cautioned that “the Philippines is not out of the water yet for another tropical impact or two,” emphasizing the need for continued vigilance as the typhoon season extends toward the end of 2025. He also highlighted the risk of heavy rains and potential flooding in eastern Australia in the coming months, a pattern consistent with previous La Nina events.
Yet, as Dr. Burgess pointed out, predicting the severity of La Nina events remains an inexact science. “We don’t often understand the drivers of how significant either an El Nino or a La Nina event will be,” she said. “So we can predict it ahead of time, and we can predict, with some uncertainty, how the climate projections and seasonal predictions suggest the event will evolve. But this particular event, all the models agree that it won’t be a severe event in terms of the drivers that make a particular event severe.”
For the Philippines, the uncertainty surrounding La Nina brings little comfort. The 2025 World Risk Index has once again ranked the nation as the world’s most disaster-prone country, a title it has held for 21 consecutive years. This dubious distinction reflects not only the country’s geographic vulnerability—situated squarely in the path of Pacific typhoons and on the volatile Pacific Ring of Fire—but also the compounding effects of poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and climate change.
The cycle of disaster and recovery is now an ingrained part of life for many Filipinos. As UNICEF’s Kyungsun Kim observed, the most vulnerable children and families are forced to “pay the highest price” as they struggle to rebuild after each successive crisis. The organization’s efforts, along with those of the Philippine government and international partners, are critical in providing immediate relief—but the underlying challenges remain daunting.
As meteorologists continue to monitor the Pacific for signs of new storms, and as aid organizations rush to deliver food, medicine, and shelter to those in need, the people of the Philippines brace themselves for what may come next. The nation’s resilience is remarkable, but as climate shocks grow more frequent and intense, the need for long-term solutions—stronger infrastructure, better disaster preparedness, and robust social safety nets—has never been more urgent.
For now, the battered communities of Luzon and beyond are focused on survival and recovery, hoping that the worst is finally behind them, even as the next storm may already be forming over the horizon.
