US Marines were dispatched this morning to Tacloban, the
remote eastern city worst affected by the storm, along with supplies of
water and generators. Flying in from Manila's Vilamor air base, they are
among the only contingents of the ballooning aid effort actually able
to reach those in need.
Houses destroyed by the strong winds caused by typhoon Haiyan at Tacloban,
eastern island of Leyte | GETTY
An aerial view of the devastation of super Typhoon
Haiyan after it battered Samar
province incentral Philippines November
11, 2013. | Reuters
Click here to see a gallery of images of devastation from Typhoon Haiyan
A
flurry of major international relief teams are expected in the coming
days, but face a challenge navigating their way through the devastated
terrain.
Feeding Tacloban's survivors will be the first
priority - but progress on this front has been slow. UNICEF Philippines
Representative Tomoo Hozumi said: “Reaching the worst affected areas is
very difficult, with limited access due to the damage caused by the
typhoon to infrastructure and communications.”
Richard
Gordon, head of the Philippine Red Cross, told the BBC: “It's absolute
bedlam right now, but hopefully it will turn out better as more and more
supplies get into the area.
“It's only now that [relief
workers] were able to get in and we're beginning just to bring in the
necessary food items... as well as water and other things that they
need.”
There will be no respite from the weather - local
forecasters are predicting a “tropical depression” to hit vast swathes
of the typhoon-affected area late on Tuesday. Though a minor system
compared to Haiyan, it could cause local flooding and will only serve to
hinder the relief effort even more.
The scale of
destruction visited on the Philippines by “super typhoon” Haiyan started
to become clear on Sunday as the winds subsided, with 10,000 people
estimated to have died in Tacloban alone, entire villages washed away
and hungry survivors looting grocery shops and attacking trucks bringing
aid.
After flying over the island of Leyte – probably
the worst affected place – in a helicopter, the Interior Secretary,
Manuel Roxas, said: “From the shore and moving a kilometre inland, there
are no structures standing. I don’t know how to describe what I saw…
It’s horrific.” He added: “Imagine … all the shanties, everything,
destroyed. They were just like matchsticks flung inland.”
The
provincial capital, Tacloban bore the brunt of the ferocious winds and
monster waves whipped up by one of the most powerful storms ever
recorded, corpses floated in floodwaters, hung in trees and lay among
the debris of flattened buildings. Survivors wept as they retrieved the
bodies of loved ones from the ruins of their homes.
With
emergency teams yet to reach coastal villages cut off by floods and
landslides, authorities predicted an even higher death toll. There were
grave fears for places such as Guiuan, a town of 40,000 people which was
the first to be struck by Haiyan as it roared across the central and
southern Philippines on Friday, flinging ships inland and destroying 70
to 80 per cent of buildings in its path.
In Tacloban,
which had a population of 220,000, “people are walking like zombies
looking for food,” said Jenny Chu, a medical student. Mobs attacked
trucks bringing in food, tents and water, according to the Philippine
Red Cross, and ATM machines were reportedly broken open.
Troops
and police were sent in to restore order after looters raided shops and
petrol stations in search of food, water and fuel. President Benigno
Aquino, who visited Tacloban yesterday, said the government was
considering introducing martial law.
One teacher, Andrew
Pomeda, told AFP on Sunday: “Some people are losing their minds from
hunger or from losing their families. People are becoming violent. They
are looting business establishments, the malls, just to find food, rice
and milk… I am afraid that in one week people will be killing from
hunger.”
The typhoon – which passed through Vietnam in a
weaker state early on Monday and was downgraded to a tropical storm as
it entered southern China – produced tsunami-like storm surges which
drowned many in its path. Others died beneath collapsed buildings. “The
water was as high as a coconut tree,” Sandy Torotoro, a bicycle taxi
driver in Tacloban, told Associated Press.
A Jeep in
which he and others tried to shelter was carried away by a wall of
water, he said. “I got out of the Jeep, and I was swept away by the
rampaging water, with logs, trees and our house, which was ripped from
its moorings… Many people were floating and raising their hands and
yelling for help. But what can we do? We also needed to be helped.”
Nancy
Chang, who was in Tacloban on a business trip, said seawater reached
the second floor of her hotel. She walked for three hours, through mud
and debris, to reach the airport, where hundreds of people were trying
to get flights out. With the airport badly damaged, only military
planes were operating.
Even by the standards of the
Philippines, which is prone to typhoons as well as earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions, Haiyan is a natural disaster of epic proportions –
and almost certainly its most lethal to date.
Authorities
had plenty of notice, and evacuated nearly 800,000 people. But “how can
you beat that typhoon?” asked the head of defence forces, Voltaire
Gazmin, questioned about whether the government had been sufficiently
prepared. “It’s the strongest on Earth. We’ve done everything we can, we
had lots of preparation.”
In Tacloban, “all vestiges of
modern living – communications, power, water – are all down”, said Mr
Roxas. He described the typhoon, with winds of up to 235mph, as “a great
human tragedy”.
Hundreds of people died in the fishing
village of Palo, near Tacloban, while on the neighbouring island of
Samar 300 people in one town were dead and 2,000 missing, according to
provincial officials. Other towns have yet to be reached by rescuers.
The
manager of Tacloban airport, Efren Nagrama, said that water levels rose
by 4m. “We escaped through the windows, and I held on to a pole for
about an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the airport,” he
said. “Some of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I prayed hard
until the water subsided.”
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