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| A ship lies on top of damaged homes after it was washed ashore in Tacloban city, Leyte province, central Philippines on Sunday, Nov. 10, 2013. The city remains littered with debris from damaged homes as many complain of shortages of food and water and no electricity since Typhoon Haiyan slammed into their province. Haiyan, one of the most powerful storms on record, slammed into six central Philippine islands on Friday, leaving a wide swath of destruction and scores of people dead. |
TACLOBAN,
Philippines (AP) -- Corpses hung from trees, were scattered on
sidewalks or buried in flattened buildings - some of the 10,000 people
believed killed in one Philippine city alone by ferocious Typhoon Haiyan
that washed away homes and buildings with powerful winds and giant
waves.
As the scale of devastation became
clear Sunday from one of the worst storms ever recorded, officials
projected the death toll could climb even higher when emergency crews
reach parts of the archipelago cut off by flooding and landslides.
Looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel
and water as the government began relief efforts and international aid
operations got underway.
Even in a nation
regularly beset by earthquakes, volcanoes and tropical storms, Typhoon
Haiyan appears to be the deadliest natural disaster on record.
Haiyan
hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippines on Friday and quickly
barreled across its central islands, packing winds of 235 kph (147 mph)
that gusted to 275 kph (170 mph), and a storm surge of 6 meters (20
feet).
Its sustained winds weakened to 133 kph
(83 mph) as it crossed the South China Sea before approaching northern
Vietnam, where it was forecast to hit land early Monday. Authorities
there evacuated hundreds of thousands of people.
Hardest
hit in the Philippines was Leyte Island, where officials said there may
be 10,000 dead in the provincial capital of Tacloban alone. Reports
also trickled in from elsewhere on the island, as well as from
neighboring islands, indicating hundreds more deaths, although it will
be days before the full extent of the storm can be assessed.
"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
Tacloban airport to catch a military flight back to Manila, about 580
kilometers (360 miles) to the northwest. "They were covered with just
anything - tarpaulin, roofing sheets, cardboard." She said she passed
"well over 100" bodies.
In one part of Tacloban, a ship had been pushed ashore and sat amid damaged homes.
Haiyan
inflicted 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 appearing to bear the brunt of the storm. About 4 million
people were affected by the storm, the national disaster agency said.
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 were in Tacloban, a city of about
200,000 that is the biggest on the island.
On
Samar, Leo Dacaynos of the provincial disaster office said 300 people
were confirmed dead in one town and another 2,000 were missing, with
some towns yet to be reached by rescuers. He pleaded for food and water,
adding that power was out and there was no cellphone signal, making
communication possible only by radio.
Reports from other affected islands indicated dozens, perhaps hundreds more deaths.
Video
from Eastern Samar province's Guiuan township - the first area where
the typhoon made landfall - showed a trail of devastation. Many houses
were flattened and roads were strewn with debris and uprooted trees. The
ABS-CBN video showed several bodies on the street, covered with
blankets.
"Even me, I have no house, I have no
clothes. I don't know how I will restart my life, I am so confused," an
unidentified woman said, crying. "I don't know what happened to us. We
are appealing for help. Whoever has a good heart, I appeal to you -
please help Guiuan."
The Philippine National
Red Cross said its efforts were hampered by looters, including some who
attacked trucks of food and other relief supplies it was shipping to
Tacloban from the southern port of Davao.
Tacloban's
two largest malls and grocery stores were looted, and police guarded a
fuel depot. About 200 police officers were sent into Tacloban to restore
law and order.
With other rampant looting
reported, President Benigno Aquino III said he was considering declaring
a state of emergency or martial law in Tacloban. A state of emergency
usually includes curfews, price and food supply controls, military or
police checkpoints and increased security patrols.
The massive casualties occurred even though the government had evacuated nearly 800,000 people ahead of the typhoon.
Aquino
flew around Leyte by helicopter on Sunday and landed in Tacloban. He
said the government's priority was to restore power and communications
in isolated areas and deliver relief and medical assistance.
Challenged to respond to a disaster of such magnitude, the Philippine government also accepted help from abroad.
U.S.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel directed the Pacific Command to deploy
ships and aircraft to support search-and-rescue operations and fly in
emergency supplies.
The United Nations said relief operations have begun but that access remained a challenge because some areas are still cut off.
Pope
Francis led tens of thousands of people at the Vatican in prayer for
the victims. The Philippines has the largest number of Catholics in
Asia, and Filipinos are one of Rome's biggest immigrant communities.
The
Philippines is annually buffeted by tropical storms and typhoons, which
are called hurricanes and cyclones elsewhere. The nation is in the
northwestern Pacific, right in the path of the world's No. 1 typhoon
generator, according to meteorologists. The archipelago's exposed
eastern seaboard often bears the brunt.
Even
by the standards of the Philippines, however, Haiyan is a catastrophe of
epic proportions and has shocked the impoverished and densely populated
nation of 96 million people. Its winds were among the strongest ever
recorded, and it appears to have killed many more people than the
previous deadliest Philippine storm, Thelma, in which about 5,100 people
died in the central Philippines in 1991.
The
country's deadliest disaster on record was the 1976 magnitude-7.9
earthquake that triggered a tsunami in the Moro Gulf in the southern
Philippines, killing 5,791 people.
Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said Aquino was "speechless" when he told him of the devastation in Tacloban.
"I told him all systems are down," Gazmin said. "There is no power, no water, nothing. People are desperate. They're looting."
Tacloban,
in the east-central Philippines, is near the Red Beach on Leyte Island
where U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur waded ashore in 1944 during World War
II and fulfilled his famous pledge: "I shall return."
It
was the first city liberated from the Japanese by U.S. and Filipino
forces and served as the Philippines' temporary capital for several
months. It is also the hometown of former Filipino first lady Imelda
Marcos, whose nephew, Alfred Romualdez, is the city's mayor.
One Tacloban resident said he and others took refuge inside a Jeep, but the vehicle was picked up 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
were strewn along the muddy main road as now-homeless residents huddled
with the few possessions they managed to save. The road was lined with
toppled trees.
UNICEF estimated that 1.7
million children live in areas affected 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.
"The devastation is ... I don't
have the words for it," Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said. "It's really
horrific. It's a great human tragedy."
In
Vietnam, about 600,000 people living in the central region who had been
evacuated returned to their homes Sunday after a weakened Haiyan changed
directions and took aim at the country's north.
Four
people in three central Vietnamese provinces died while trying to
reinforce their homes for the storm, the national floods and storms
control department said Sunday.
