US carrier with aid arrives as Philippines buries dead
Print Edition
A US aircraft carrier “strike group” started unloading food and water to the typhoon-ravaged central Philippines yesterday, as President Benigno Aquino faced mounting pressure to speed up the distribution of supplies.
While relief efforts picked up, local authorities began burying the dead — an important, if grim, milestone for a city shredded by one of the world’s most powerful typhoons and the tsunami-like wall of seawater believed to have killed thousands.
“There are still bodies on the road,” said Alfred Romualdez, mayor of Tacloban, a city of 220,000 people reduced to rubble. “It’s scary. There is a request from a community to come and collect bodies. They say it’s five or 10. When we get there, it’s 40.”
Many petrol station owners whose businesses were spared have refused to reopen, leaving little fuel for trucks needed to move supplies and medical teams around the devastated areas nearly a week after Typhoon Haiyan struck.
“The choice is to use the same truck either to distribute food or collect bodies,” Romualdez added.
The nuclear-powered USS George Washington aircraft carrier and accompanying ships arrived off wind-swept eastern Samar province, carrying 5,000 crew and more than 80 aircraft, after what strike force commander Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery called a “high-speed transit” from China’s Hong Kong.
“Operation Damayan” started with the George Washington and two cruisers taking up position off Samar to assess damage and provide logistical and emergency support such as fresh water.
Ships carried 11 pallets ashore — eight containing 1,920 gallons of water and three containing food — at the Tacloban airfield. Several pallets of water were taken to Guiuan, home to 45,000 people, which was also badly hit by the storm.
Britain also said it would send a helicopter carrier, HMS Illustrious, to help in the relief effort. Japan was also planning to send up to 1,000 troops as well as naval vessels and aircraft, in what could be Tokyo’s biggest postwar military deployment.
Outside Taclaban, burials began for about 300 bodies in a mass grave yesterday. A larger grave will be dug for 1,000.
The city government remains paralysed, with an average of just 70 workers compared to 2,500 normally. Many were killed, injured, lost family or were simply too overcome with grief to work.
The government was distributing 50,000 food packs containing 6kg of rice and canned goods each day, but that covers just 3 percent of the 1.73 million families affected by the typhoon.
The preliminary number of missing as of yesterday, according to the Red Cross, remained at 22,000.
More the 544,600 people have been displaced, the United Nations said. But many areas still have not received aid.
Anger and frustration have been boiling over as essential supplies fail to reach many of those in need.
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