One month ago today, Typhoon Rai pummeled 11 regions of the Philippines in the second deadliest disaster to hit the globe in 2021. The typhoon brought violent winds, floods and storm surges, affecting at least 8 million people, and leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

The Government was prepared for the storm, having pre-emptively evacuated hundreds of thousands of people to evacuation sites across the country. Thankfully, this saved countless lives.

But as assessment results have come in over the past month, the sheer extent of the typhoon’s destruction is now all too clear. It damaged infrastructure and livelihoods on a comparable scale to Typhoon Haiyan, forcing 2.7 million people from their homes, damaging almost l.4 million houses, and affecting 514 towns and cities, 100 of which still have power outages or no power at all.