SuperTyphoon Haiyan Racks Up Massive Death Toll Thru Philippines; Moves Toward Viet Nam
Philippine typhoon death toll could reach 10,000
Associated Press By JIM GOMEZ
TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) - The death toll from one of the strongest storms on record that ravaged the central Philippine city of Tacloban could reach 10,000 people, officials said Sunday after the extent of massive devastation became apparent and horrified survivors spoke of storm surges as high as trees and winds sounding like the roar of a jumbo jet.
Regional police chief Elmer Soria said he was briefed by Leyte provincial Gov. Dominic Petilla late Saturday and told there were about 10,000 deaths in the province, mostly by drowning and from collapsed buildings. The governor's figure was based on reports from village officials in areas where Typhoon Haiyan slammed Friday.
Tacloban city administrator Tecson Lim said that the death toll in the city alone "could go up to 10,000." Tacloban is the Leyte provincial capital of 200,000 people and the biggest city on Leyte Island.
About 300-400 bodies have already been recovered and "still a lot under the debris," Lim said. A mass burial was planned Sunday in Palo town near Tacloban.
The typhoon barreled through six central Philippine islands on Friday, wiping away buildings and leveling seaside homes with ferocious winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour) and gusts of 275 kph (170 mph). By those measurements, Haiyan would be comparable to a strong Category 4 hurricane in the U.S., and nearly in the top category, a 5.
It weakened Sunday to 163 kph (101 mph) with stronger gusts as it approached central and northern Vietnam where authorities evacuated more than 500,000 people. It was forecast to make landfall Monday morning.
"The rescue operation is ongoing. We expect a very high number of fatalities as well as injured," Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said after visiting Tacloban on Saturday. "All systems, all vestiges of modern living - communications, power, water - all are down. Media is down, so there is no way to communicate with the people in a mass sort of way."
President Benigno Aquino III said the casualties "will be substantially more" than the official count of 151 - but gave no figure or estimate. He said the government's priority was to restore power and communications in isolated areas to allow for the delivery of relief and medical assistance to victims.
The U.S. and other governments and agencies were mounting a major relief effort "because of the magnitude of the disaster," said Philippine Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon.
Even by the standards of the Philippines, which is buffeted by many natural calamities - about 20 typhoons a year, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions - the latest disaster shocked the impoverished nation of 96 million people.
The airport in Tacloban, about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Manila, looked like a muddy wasteland of debris, with crumpled tin roofs and upturned cars. The airport tower's glass windows were shattered, and air force helicopters were busy flying in and out at the start of relief operations. Residential homes that had lined up a 7-kilometer (4-mile) stretch of road leading to Tacloban city were all blown or washed away.
The winds were so strong that Tacloban residents who sought shelter at a local school tied down the roof of the building but it was still ripped off and the school collapsed, Lim said. It wasn't clear how many died there.
"The devastation is, I don't have the words for it," Roxas said. "It's really horrific. It's a great human tragedy."
Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said Aquino was "speechless" when he told him of the devastation the typhoon had wrought in Tacloban.
"I told him all systems are down," Gazmin said. "There is no power, no water, nothing. People are desperate. They're looting."
The city's two largest malls and groceries were looted and the gasoline stations destroyed by the typhoon. Police were deployed to guard a fuel depot to prevent looting of fuel.
On Sunday, the city's overwhelmed services were reinforced by 100 special police force units sent in from elsewhere to help restore peace and order.
"On the way to the airport we saw many bodies along the street," said Philippine-born Australian Mila Ward, 53, who was waiting at the airport to catch a military flight back to Manila.
"They were covered with just anything - tarpaulin, roofing sheets, cardboards," she said. Asked how many, she said, "Well over 100 where we passed."
U.S. Marine Col. Mike Wylie surveyed the damage in Tacloban prior to possible American assistance. "The storm surge came in fairly high and there is significant structural damage and trees blown over," said Wylie, who is a member of the U.S.-Philippines Military Assistance Group based in Manila.
At the request of the Philippine government, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel directed U.S. Pacific Command to deploy ships and aircraft to support search-and-rescue operations and airlift emergency supplies, according to a statement released by the Defense Department press office.
Tacloban is near the Red Beach on Leyte Island where U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur waded ashore on October 20, 1944, fulfilling his famous pledge, "I shall return," made in March 1942 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered him to relocate to Australia as Japanese forces pushed back U.S. and Filipino defenders.
Tacloban was the first city to be liberated by U.S. and Filipino forces and served as the Philippines' temporary capital for several months. It is also the home town of former Filipino first lady Imelda Marcos, whose nephew, Alfred Romualdez, is the city's mayor.
The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said in a message to Aquino that the EC had sent a team to assist the Philippine authorities and that "we stand ready to contribute with urgent relief and assistance if so required in this hour of need."
One Tacloban resident said he and others took refuge inside a parked Jeep to protect themselves from the storm, but the vehicle was swept away by a surging wall of water.
"The water was as high as a coconut tree," said 44-year-old Sandy Torotoro, a bicycle taxi driver who lives near the airport with his wife and 8-year-old daughter. "I got out of the Jeep and I was swept away by the rampaging water with logs, trees and our house, which was ripped off from its mooring."
"When we were being swept by the water, many people were floating and raising their hands and yelling for help. But what can we do? We also needed to be helped," Torotoro said.
In Torotoro's village, bodies could be seen lying along the muddy main road, as residents who had lost their homes huddled, holding on to the few things they had managed to save. The road was lined with trees that had fallen to the ground.
Vice Mayor Jim Pe of Coron town on Busuanga, the last island battered by the typhoon before it blew away to the South China Sea, said most of the houses and buildings there had been destroyed or damaged. Five people drowned in the storm surge and three others were missing, he said by phone.
"It was like a 747 flying just above my roof," he said, describing the sound of the winds. He said his family and some of his neighbors whose houses were destroyed took shelter in his basement.
Philippine broadcaster ABS-CBN showed fierce winds whipping buildings and vehicles as storm surges swamped Tacloban with debris-laden floodwaters.
In the aftermath of the typhoon, people were seen weeping while retrieving bodies of loved ones inside buildings and on a street that was littered with fallen trees, roofing material and other building parts torn off in the storm's fury. All that was left of one large building whose walls were smashed in were the skeletal remains of its rafters.
ABS-CBN television anchor Ted Failon, who was able to report only briefly Friday from Tacloban, said the storm surge was "like the tsunami in Japan."
"The sea engulfed Tacloban," he said, explaining that a major part of the city is surrounded on three sides by the waters between Leyte and Samar islands.
Tim Ticar, a local tourism officer, said 6,000 foreign and local tourists were stranded on the popular resort island of Boracay, one of the tourist spots in the typhoon's path.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered his condolences and said U.N. humanitarian agencies were working closely with the Philippine government to respond rapidly with emergency assistance, according to a statement released by the U.N. spokesperson's office.
UNICEF estimated that about 1.7 million children are living in areas impacted by the typhoon, according to the agency's representative in the Philippines Tomoo Hozumi. UNICEF's supply division in Copenhagen was loading 60 metric tons of relief supplies for an emergency airlift expected to arrive in the Philippines on Tuesday.
Haiyan was forecast to lash central Vietnam's coast on Sunday afternoon, making its way to the northern part of the country before likely weakening to a tropical storm.
Vietnamese authorities in four central provinces were evacuating more than 500,000 people from high-risk areas to government buildings, schools and other concrete homes able to withstand strong winds.
"The evacuation is being conducted with urgency," disaster official Nguyen Thi Yen Linh said from central Danang City, where some 76,000 were being moved to safety.
Hundreds of thousands of others were being taken to shelters in the provinces of Quang Ngai, Quang Nam and Thua Thien Hue. Schools were closed and two deputy prime ministers were sent to the region to direct the preparations.
http://news.yahoo.com/philippine-typhoon-death-toll-could-reach-10-000-011657978.html
------------------------------------------------------
Typhoon Haiyan: In hard-hit Tacloban, children ripped from arms
By Andrew Stevens and Paula Hancocks, CNN
November 10, 2013 -- Updated 0516 GMT (1316 HKT)
Tacloban, Philippines (CNN) -- No building in this coastal city of 200,000 residents appears to have escaped damage from Super Typhoon Haiyan. Most roads were impassable Saturday; all communications except for satellite phones were down; medical supplies, food and water were scarce; and there were reports of looting.
And that was far from the worst of it.
Death toll likely exceeds 1,000
People who had walked, sometimes for hours, to the relief station at the Tacloban airport told stories of the human cost.
Marvin Isanan said three of his daughters -- ages 8, 13 and 15 -- were swept from his arms by the storm surge. He and his wife, Loretta Isanan, had found the bodies of the two younger children. "Only the eldest one is missing," Marvin Isanan said through tears. "I hope she's alive."
A woman at the airport said she escaped the water by climbing onto her roof. From there, she watched bodies float by.
Authorities have only estimates of the deaths. Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, estimated that 1,000 people died in Tacloban and an additional 200 on the nearby island of Samar. The airport now houses a makeshift morgue. Further inland, a CNN crew found a small chapel being used to house nine covered bodies -- five of them children.
The scene from the air
CNN's Ivan Watson traveled by plane from Manila to Tacloban with civil aviation officials Sunday. "On approach, you could see entire forests of palm trees that have been flattened in the hills around Tacloban," he said. Watson saw flooded villages and devastated coastlines, as well as a warehouse district where every roof seemed to be missing. William Hotchkiss, director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines and a former air force commander, said, "I'm 70 years old, and I've never seen anything like this before."
Eastern islands first to feel typhoon's force
Samar province and Tacloban, in Leyte province, are part of the Philippines' eastern islands.
A man looks at the wreckage of destroyed houses in Tacloban on November 10, 2013.
U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur made his famous return to the Philippines near Tacloban in World War II, wading ashore from the Leyte Gulf in 1944. The Battle of Samar was part of the ensuing naval battle in the Leyte Gulf, which ended with Japanese naval forces crushed. The geography made the area the first heavily populated area to feel the force of Haiyan on Friday. The million people who lived along the coast, many of them in rough-built shacks, may have been worst affected by what some said was a 5-foot storm surge that spread through the city of Tacloban at the height of the storm and with devastating speed. It receded quickly, leaving a path marked by pieces of people's lives destroyed.
Relief effort no match for need
The Tacloban airport was not ready to accommodate the landing of large planes carrying aid, though military helicopters began ferrying in supplies on Saturday. Trees and debris had blocked the road to the airport, further delaying the relief operation, but authorities cleared that road Sunday. Residents lined up at the airport for food. But the resources available were proving no match for the massive needs of the people, some of whom scoured piles of garbage in the streets for food, water or even missing loved ones.
People queue up to receive relief goods being distributed at Tacloban's airport on November 10, 2013.
Some residents broke into grocery stores to find food. The government responded to reports of looting by sending in police reinforcement and a 500-member military battalion. People were wading through waist-high water amid a landscape littered with overturned vehicles, downed utility poles and trees, all of which were blocking the aid effort.
With basically no medical supplies left, the city's St. Paul's hospital was hopelessly overwhelmed. The Philippine Red Cross succeeded in getting its assessment team into Tacloban but had not managed to get its main team of aid workers and equipment to the city, Chairman Richard Gordon said. "We really are having access problems," he said, adding that he was considering chartering a boat, which would take at least 1½ days to get there.
CNN's Andrew Stevens and Paula Hancocks reported this story from Tacloban; Tom Watkins and David Simpson wrote from Atlanta.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/09/world/asia/philippines-tacloban/
---------------------------------------------------
Typhoon Haiyan: Thousands feared dead in Philippines
Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from the airport at Tacloban: ''A scene of complete devastation''
Around 10,000 people may have died in just one area of the Philippines hit by Typhoon Haiyan, according to officials.
One of the worst storms on record, it destroyed homes, schools and an airport in the eastern city of Tacloban. Neighbouring Samar island was also badly affected, with reports of 300 people dead and 2,000 missing.
The Philippine government has so far only confirmed the deaths of 151 people throughout the country, but hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports that the scene in Tacloban, the capital of Leyte province, is one of utter devastation. Houses in Tacloban have been flattened by the massive storm surge that accompanied Typhoon Haiyan. There's no clean water, no electricity and very little food. City officials said they were struggling to distribute aid and that looting was widespread. Our correspondent says hundreds of people are at the airport, itself badly damaged, trying to get on a flight out of Tacloban.
The typhoon is now bearing down on Vietnam. More than 600,000 people have been evacuated in northern provinces.
At least four people were reported killed, apparently while trying to escape the storm.
The BBC Weather Centre says the typhoon is expected to make landfall south of Hanoi on Monday afternoon local time (between 03:00 and 09:00 GMT), although it will have decreased markedly in strength.
Large ship washed ashore by typhoon in Tacloban - 10 November
The storm was so powerful that it washed large ships ashore in the city of Tacloban
Flattened houses in coastal area of Tacloban - 10 November
Homes were flattened in much of the city
Injured boy stands in ruins of family home - 10 November
Many people in Tacloban have been made homeless
Scene of devastation in Tacloban - 10
The scene resembled the aftermath of a tsunami
Residents in Tacloban push shutters of grocery shop in attempt to get food - 10 November
People have been struggling to find food
Relief operation
Philippine Interior Secretary Mar Roxas says the scale of the relief operation that is now required is overwhelming, with some places described as a wasteland of mud and debris.
Tecson Lim, city administrator of Tacloban, told the Associated Press that the death toll in the city alone "could go up to 10,000". Police chief Elmer Soria said about 70% to 80% of the area in the path of the storm in Leyte province was destroyed.
Typhoon Haiyan is headed for Vietnam
He said most of the deaths were from drowning or collapsed buildings.
Meanwhile Leo Dacaynos, an official in Eastern Samar province, told local radio 300 people had been found dead in a single town, Basey, with another 2,000 missing and many injured. Communication is still limited in many areas. The latest report from the Philippines' Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council confirmed 151 deaths as of 22:00 GMT on Saturday. It said almost 480,000 people had been reported displaced.
Thousands of troops have been deployed to the disaster zones. However, rescuers are struggling to get to remote areas, hampered by debris and damaged roads.
Search and rescue
Typhoon Haiyan - one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall - swept through six central Philippine islands on Friday.
It brought sustained winds of 235km/h (147mph), with gusts of 275 km/h (170 mph), with waves as high as 15m (45ft), bringing up to 400mm (15.75 inches) of rain in places.
The Pentagon has announced it is providing the Philippines with naval and aviation resources to help with humanitarian relief efforts. In a statement, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said the US was delivering helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft and search and rescue equipment after a request from the Philippines government.
Capt John Andrews, deputy director general of the Civil Aviation Authority in the Philippines, told the BBC he had flown over the worst affected areas in Leyte and seen "utter destruction". "I have never seen such damage in my life," he said. "It would probably be similar to having a tornado run over a big open space. At the airport, there's actually no structure left standing except the walls."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24887337
Associated Press By JIM GOMEZ
TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) - The death toll from one of the strongest storms on record that ravaged the central Philippine city of Tacloban could reach 10,000 people, officials said Sunday after the extent of massive devastation became apparent and horrified survivors spoke of storm surges as high as trees and winds sounding like the roar of a jumbo jet.
Regional police chief Elmer Soria said he was briefed by Leyte provincial Gov. Dominic Petilla late Saturday and told there were about 10,000 deaths in the province, mostly by drowning and from collapsed buildings. The governor's figure was based on reports from village officials in areas where Typhoon Haiyan slammed Friday.
Tacloban city administrator Tecson Lim said that the death toll in the city alone "could go up to 10,000." Tacloban is the Leyte provincial capital of 200,000 people and the biggest city on Leyte Island.
About 300-400 bodies have already been recovered and "still a lot under the debris," Lim said. A mass burial was planned Sunday in Palo town near Tacloban.
The typhoon barreled through six central Philippine islands on Friday, wiping away buildings and leveling seaside homes with ferocious winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour) and gusts of 275 kph (170 mph). By those measurements, Haiyan would be comparable to a strong Category 4 hurricane in the U.S., and nearly in the top category, a 5.
It weakened Sunday to 163 kph (101 mph) with stronger gusts as it approached central and northern Vietnam where authorities evacuated more than 500,000 people. It was forecast to make landfall Monday morning.
"The rescue operation is ongoing. We expect a very high number of fatalities as well as injured," Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said after visiting Tacloban on Saturday. "All systems, all vestiges of modern living - communications, power, water - all are down. Media is down, so there is no way to communicate with the people in a mass sort of way."
President Benigno Aquino III said the casualties "will be substantially more" than the official count of 151 - but gave no figure or estimate. He said the government's priority was to restore power and communications in isolated areas to allow for the delivery of relief and medical assistance to victims.
The U.S. and other governments and agencies were mounting a major relief effort "because of the magnitude of the disaster," said Philippine Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon.
Even by the standards of the Philippines, which is buffeted by many natural calamities - about 20 typhoons a year, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions - the latest disaster shocked the impoverished nation of 96 million people.
The airport in Tacloban, about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Manila, looked like a muddy wasteland of debris, with crumpled tin roofs and upturned cars. The airport tower's glass windows were shattered, and air force helicopters were busy flying in and out at the start of relief operations. Residential homes that had lined up a 7-kilometer (4-mile) stretch of road leading to Tacloban city were all blown or washed away.
The winds were so strong that Tacloban residents who sought shelter at a local school tied down the roof of the building but it was still ripped off and the school collapsed, Lim said. It wasn't clear how many died there.
"The devastation is, I don't have the words for it," Roxas said. "It's really horrific. It's a great human tragedy."
Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said Aquino was "speechless" when he told him of the devastation the typhoon had wrought in Tacloban.
"I told him all systems are down," Gazmin said. "There is no power, no water, nothing. People are desperate. They're looting."
The city's two largest malls and groceries were looted and the gasoline stations destroyed by the typhoon. Police were deployed to guard a fuel depot to prevent looting of fuel.
On Sunday, the city's overwhelmed services were reinforced by 100 special police force units sent in from elsewhere to help restore peace and order.
"On the way to the airport we saw many bodies along the street," said Philippine-born Australian Mila Ward, 53, who was waiting at the airport to catch a military flight back to Manila.
"They were covered with just anything - tarpaulin, roofing sheets, cardboards," she said. Asked how many, she said, "Well over 100 where we passed."
U.S. Marine Col. Mike Wylie surveyed the damage in Tacloban prior to possible American assistance. "The storm surge came in fairly high and there is significant structural damage and trees blown over," said Wylie, who is a member of the U.S.-Philippines Military Assistance Group based in Manila.
At the request of the Philippine government, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel directed U.S. Pacific Command to deploy ships and aircraft to support search-and-rescue operations and airlift emergency supplies, according to a statement released by the Defense Department press office.
Tacloban is near the Red Beach on Leyte Island where U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur waded ashore on October 20, 1944, fulfilling his famous pledge, "I shall return," made in March 1942 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered him to relocate to Australia as Japanese forces pushed back U.S. and Filipino defenders.
Tacloban was the first city to be liberated by U.S. and Filipino forces and served as the Philippines' temporary capital for several months. It is also the home town of former Filipino first lady Imelda Marcos, whose nephew, Alfred Romualdez, is the city's mayor.
The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said in a message to Aquino that the EC had sent a team to assist the Philippine authorities and that "we stand ready to contribute with urgent relief and assistance if so required in this hour of need."
One Tacloban resident said he and others took refuge inside a parked Jeep to protect themselves from the storm, but the vehicle was swept away by a surging wall of water.
"The water was as high as a coconut tree," said 44-year-old Sandy Torotoro, a bicycle taxi driver who lives near the airport with his wife and 8-year-old daughter. "I got out of the Jeep and I was swept away by the rampaging water with logs, trees and our house, which was ripped off from its mooring."
"When we were being swept by the water, many people were floating and raising their hands and yelling for help. But what can we do? We also needed to be helped," Torotoro said.
In Torotoro's village, bodies could be seen lying along the muddy main road, as residents who had lost their homes huddled, holding on to the few things they had managed to save. The road was lined with trees that had fallen to the ground.
Vice Mayor Jim Pe of Coron town on Busuanga, the last island battered by the typhoon before it blew away to the South China Sea, said most of the houses and buildings there had been destroyed or damaged. Five people drowned in the storm surge and three others were missing, he said by phone.
"It was like a 747 flying just above my roof," he said, describing the sound of the winds. He said his family and some of his neighbors whose houses were destroyed took shelter in his basement.
Philippine broadcaster ABS-CBN showed fierce winds whipping buildings and vehicles as storm surges swamped Tacloban with debris-laden floodwaters.
In the aftermath of the typhoon, people were seen weeping while retrieving bodies of loved ones inside buildings and on a street that was littered with fallen trees, roofing material and other building parts torn off in the storm's fury. All that was left of one large building whose walls were smashed in were the skeletal remains of its rafters.
ABS-CBN television anchor Ted Failon, who was able to report only briefly Friday from Tacloban, said the storm surge was "like the tsunami in Japan."
"The sea engulfed Tacloban," he said, explaining that a major part of the city is surrounded on three sides by the waters between Leyte and Samar islands.
Tim Ticar, a local tourism officer, said 6,000 foreign and local tourists were stranded on the popular resort island of Boracay, one of the tourist spots in the typhoon's path.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered his condolences and said U.N. humanitarian agencies were working closely with the Philippine government to respond rapidly with emergency assistance, according to a statement released by the U.N. spokesperson's office.
UNICEF estimated that about 1.7 million children are living in areas impacted by the typhoon, according to the agency's representative in the Philippines Tomoo Hozumi. UNICEF's supply division in Copenhagen was loading 60 metric tons of relief supplies for an emergency airlift expected to arrive in the Philippines on Tuesday.
Haiyan was forecast to lash central Vietnam's coast on Sunday afternoon, making its way to the northern part of the country before likely weakening to a tropical storm.
Vietnamese authorities in four central provinces were evacuating more than 500,000 people from high-risk areas to government buildings, schools and other concrete homes able to withstand strong winds.
"The evacuation is being conducted with urgency," disaster official Nguyen Thi Yen Linh said from central Danang City, where some 76,000 were being moved to safety.
Hundreds of thousands of others were being taken to shelters in the provinces of Quang Ngai, Quang Nam and Thua Thien Hue. Schools were closed and two deputy prime ministers were sent to the region to direct the preparations.
http://news.yahoo.com/philippine-typhoon-death-toll-could-reach-10-000-011657978.html
------------------------------------------------------
Typhoon Haiyan: In hard-hit Tacloban, children ripped from arms
By Andrew Stevens and Paula Hancocks, CNN
November 10, 2013 -- Updated 0516 GMT (1316 HKT)
Tacloban, Philippines (CNN) -- No building in this coastal city of 200,000 residents appears to have escaped damage from Super Typhoon Haiyan. Most roads were impassable Saturday; all communications except for satellite phones were down; medical supplies, food and water were scarce; and there were reports of looting.
And that was far from the worst of it.
Death toll likely exceeds 1,000
People who had walked, sometimes for hours, to the relief station at the Tacloban airport told stories of the human cost.
Marvin Isanan said three of his daughters -- ages 8, 13 and 15 -- were swept from his arms by the storm surge. He and his wife, Loretta Isanan, had found the bodies of the two younger children. "Only the eldest one is missing," Marvin Isanan said through tears. "I hope she's alive."
A woman at the airport said she escaped the water by climbing onto her roof. From there, she watched bodies float by.
Authorities have only estimates of the deaths. Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, estimated that 1,000 people died in Tacloban and an additional 200 on the nearby island of Samar. The airport now houses a makeshift morgue. Further inland, a CNN crew found a small chapel being used to house nine covered bodies -- five of them children.
The scene from the air
CNN's Ivan Watson traveled by plane from Manila to Tacloban with civil aviation officials Sunday. "On approach, you could see entire forests of palm trees that have been flattened in the hills around Tacloban," he said. Watson saw flooded villages and devastated coastlines, as well as a warehouse district where every roof seemed to be missing. William Hotchkiss, director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines and a former air force commander, said, "I'm 70 years old, and I've never seen anything like this before."
Eastern islands first to feel typhoon's force
Samar province and Tacloban, in Leyte province, are part of the Philippines' eastern islands.
A man looks at the wreckage of destroyed houses in Tacloban on November 10, 2013.
U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur made his famous return to the Philippines near Tacloban in World War II, wading ashore from the Leyte Gulf in 1944. The Battle of Samar was part of the ensuing naval battle in the Leyte Gulf, which ended with Japanese naval forces crushed. The geography made the area the first heavily populated area to feel the force of Haiyan on Friday. The million people who lived along the coast, many of them in rough-built shacks, may have been worst affected by what some said was a 5-foot storm surge that spread through the city of Tacloban at the height of the storm and with devastating speed. It receded quickly, leaving a path marked by pieces of people's lives destroyed.
Relief effort no match for need
The Tacloban airport was not ready to accommodate the landing of large planes carrying aid, though military helicopters began ferrying in supplies on Saturday. Trees and debris had blocked the road to the airport, further delaying the relief operation, but authorities cleared that road Sunday. Residents lined up at the airport for food. But the resources available were proving no match for the massive needs of the people, some of whom scoured piles of garbage in the streets for food, water or even missing loved ones.
People queue up to receive relief goods being distributed at Tacloban's airport on November 10, 2013.
Some residents broke into grocery stores to find food. The government responded to reports of looting by sending in police reinforcement and a 500-member military battalion. People were wading through waist-high water amid a landscape littered with overturned vehicles, downed utility poles and trees, all of which were blocking the aid effort.
With basically no medical supplies left, the city's St. Paul's hospital was hopelessly overwhelmed. The Philippine Red Cross succeeded in getting its assessment team into Tacloban but had not managed to get its main team of aid workers and equipment to the city, Chairman Richard Gordon said. "We really are having access problems," he said, adding that he was considering chartering a boat, which would take at least 1½ days to get there.
CNN's Andrew Stevens and Paula Hancocks reported this story from Tacloban; Tom Watkins and David Simpson wrote from Atlanta.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/09/world/asia/philippines-tacloban/
---------------------------------------------------
Typhoon Haiyan: Thousands feared dead in Philippines
Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from the airport at Tacloban: ''A scene of complete devastation''
Around 10,000 people may have died in just one area of the Philippines hit by Typhoon Haiyan, according to officials.
One of the worst storms on record, it destroyed homes, schools and an airport in the eastern city of Tacloban. Neighbouring Samar island was also badly affected, with reports of 300 people dead and 2,000 missing.
The Philippine government has so far only confirmed the deaths of 151 people throughout the country, but hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports that the scene in Tacloban, the capital of Leyte province, is one of utter devastation. Houses in Tacloban have been flattened by the massive storm surge that accompanied Typhoon Haiyan. There's no clean water, no electricity and very little food. City officials said they were struggling to distribute aid and that looting was widespread. Our correspondent says hundreds of people are at the airport, itself badly damaged, trying to get on a flight out of Tacloban.
The typhoon is now bearing down on Vietnam. More than 600,000 people have been evacuated in northern provinces.
At least four people were reported killed, apparently while trying to escape the storm.
The BBC Weather Centre says the typhoon is expected to make landfall south of Hanoi on Monday afternoon local time (between 03:00 and 09:00 GMT), although it will have decreased markedly in strength.
Large ship washed ashore by typhoon in Tacloban - 10 November
The storm was so powerful that it washed large ships ashore in the city of Tacloban
Flattened houses in coastal area of Tacloban - 10 November
Homes were flattened in much of the city
Injured boy stands in ruins of family home - 10 November
Many people in Tacloban have been made homeless
Scene of devastation in Tacloban - 10
The scene resembled the aftermath of a tsunami
Residents in Tacloban push shutters of grocery shop in attempt to get food - 10 November
People have been struggling to find food
Relief operation
Philippine Interior Secretary Mar Roxas says the scale of the relief operation that is now required is overwhelming, with some places described as a wasteland of mud and debris.
Tecson Lim, city administrator of Tacloban, told the Associated Press that the death toll in the city alone "could go up to 10,000". Police chief Elmer Soria said about 70% to 80% of the area in the path of the storm in Leyte province was destroyed.
Typhoon Haiyan is headed for Vietnam
He said most of the deaths were from drowning or collapsed buildings.
Meanwhile Leo Dacaynos, an official in Eastern Samar province, told local radio 300 people had been found dead in a single town, Basey, with another 2,000 missing and many injured. Communication is still limited in many areas. The latest report from the Philippines' Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council confirmed 151 deaths as of 22:00 GMT on Saturday. It said almost 480,000 people had been reported displaced.
Thousands of troops have been deployed to the disaster zones. However, rescuers are struggling to get to remote areas, hampered by debris and damaged roads.
Search and rescue
Typhoon Haiyan - one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall - swept through six central Philippine islands on Friday.
It brought sustained winds of 235km/h (147mph), with gusts of 275 km/h (170 mph), with waves as high as 15m (45ft), bringing up to 400mm (15.75 inches) of rain in places.
The Pentagon has announced it is providing the Philippines with naval and aviation resources to help with humanitarian relief efforts. In a statement, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said the US was delivering helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft and search and rescue equipment after a request from the Philippines government.
Capt John Andrews, deputy director general of the Civil Aviation Authority in the Philippines, told the BBC he had flown over the worst affected areas in Leyte and seen "utter destruction". "I have never seen such damage in my life," he said. "It would probably be similar to having a tornado run over a big open space. At the airport, there's actually no structure left standing except the walls."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24887337