Typhoon leaves thousands dead in Philippines with toll likely to rise
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As many as 10,000 people are believed dead in one Philippine city alone after one of the worst storms on record unleashed ferocious winds and giant waves that washed away homes and schools. Corpses hung from tree branches and were scattered along sidewalks and among flattened buildings, while looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water.
Officials said the death toll could climb higher after emergency crews reach areas cut off by flooding and landslides.
Typhoon Haiyan hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippine archipelago on Friday and quickly barreled across its central islands before exiting into the South China Sea, packing winds of up to 275 kph, and a storm surge that caused sea waters to rise 6 meters.
It wasn’t until yesterday that the scale of the devastation became clear, with officials on hardest-hit Leyte Island saying there may be 10,000 dead in the provincial capital of Tacloban alone. Reports also trickled in from elsewhere on the island, and from neighboring islands, indicating hundreds, if not thousands more deaths.
“On the way to the airport we saw many bodies along the street,” said Australian Mila Ward, 53, who was at Tacloban airport to catch a military flight back to Manila. “They were covered with just anything — tarpaulin, roofing sheets, cardboard.”
People wept while retrieving the bodies of loved ones from inside buildings. On a street littered with fallen trees, roofing material and other debris, all that was left of one building were the skeletal remains of its rafters.
The airport in Tacloban, about 580 kilometers southeast of Manila, was a muddy wasteland of debris, with crumpled tin roofs and overturned cars. The airport tower’s glass windows were shattered, and air force helicopters were flying in and out as relief operations got underway. Residential homes lining the road into Tacloban were all blown or washed away.
“All systems, all vestiges of modern living — communications, power, water — all are down,” Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said after visiting Tacloban.
Haiyan raced across eastern and central Philippines, inflicting serious damage to at least six of the archipelago’s more than 7,000 islands, with Leyte, neighboring Samar Island, and the northern part of Cebu the hardest hit.
On Leyte, regional police chief Elmer Soria said the provincial governor had told him there were about 10,000 deaths there, primarily from drowning and collapsed buildings. Most of the deaths were in Tacloban.
On Samar, the disaster office said 300 people were confirmed dead in one town and another 2,000 were missing. Other towns had yet to be reached.
Reports from other islands indicated dozens, perhaps hundreds more deaths.
Haiyan’s winds were so strong Tacloban residents who sought shelter in a school tied down the building’s roof, but it was ripped off and the school collapsed. It wasn’t clear how many died.
“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.
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