After the storm: Dazed survivors begging for help
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Dazed survivors were begging for help and scavenging for food, water and medicine yesterday in the aftermath of the super typhoon that killed thousands of people in the central Philippines.
President Benigno Aquino declared a “state of national calamity” and deployed hundreds of soldiers in the coastal city of Tacloban to quell looting.
The huge scale of death and destruction from Friday’s storm become clearer as reports emerged of thousands of people missing and images showed apocalyptic scenes in one town not yet reached by rescue workers.
One of the most powerful storms on record, Typhoon Haiyan levelled Basey, a seaside town in Samar Province about 10 kilometers across a bay from Tacloban in Leyte Province, where at least 10,000 people were killed.
About 2,000 people are missing in Basey, according to officials.
“The situation is bad, the devastation has been significant. In some cases the devastation has been total,” Secretary to the Cabinet Rene Almendras told a news conference.
The United Nations said officials in Tacloban had reported one mass grave of 300-500 bodies. More than 600,000 people were displaced by the storm across the country and some have no access to food, water, or medicine, the UN says.
Flattened by surging waves and winds up to 378 kilometers per hour, Tacloban, 580 kilometers southeast of Manila, was relying almost entirely for supplies and evacuation on just three military transport planes flying from nearby Cebu City.
Dozens of residents clamored for help at the airport gates.
In a nationwide broadcast, Aquino said the government was focusing relief and assistance efforts on Samar and Leyte provinces, which acted as “funnels for the storm surges.”
The declaration of a state of national calamity should quicken rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts. It will also allow the government to use state funds for relief and rehabilitation and control prices.
Aquino said the government had set aside 18.7 billion pesos (US$432.97 million for rehabilitation.
More bad weather was on the way with a depression due to bring rain to the central and southern Philippines today, the weather bureau said.
Three days after the typhoon made landfall, residents of Tacloban told terrifying accounts of being swept away by a wall of water, revealing a city that had been hopelessly unprepared for a storm of almost unprecedented power.
Most of the damage and deaths were caused by waves that inundated towns, washed ships ashore and swept away villages in scenes reminiscent of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Aquino, who before the storm said the government was aiming for zero casualties, has shown exasperation at conflicting reports on damage and deaths. One TV network quoted him as telling the head of the disaster agency that he was running out of patience.
The official death toll is likely to climb rapidly once rescuers reach remote parts of the coast, such as Guiuan, a town with a population of 40,000 that was largely destroyed.
About 400 people were confirmed dead in Samar province, according to provincial governor Sharee Ann Tan. Baco, a city of 35,000 in Oriental Mindoro Province, was 80 percent under water, the United Nations said.
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