Philippines Typhoon Kills At Least 10,000 'worse Than Hell'

One of the most powerful storms recorded
killed at least 10,000 people in the central
Philippines, a senior police official said on
Sunday, with huge waves sweeping away
entire coastal villages and devastating the
region's main city.
Super typhoon Haiyan destroyed about 70
to 80 percent of the area in its path as it
tore through Leyte province on Friday, said
chief superintendent Elmer Soria, a regional
police director.
Most of the deaths appear to have been
caused by surging sea water strewn with
debris that many described as similar to a
tsunami, leveling houses and drowning
hundreds of people in one of the worst
natural disasters to hit the typhoon-prone
Southeast Asian nation.
The national government and disaster
agency have not confirmed the latest
estimate of deaths, a sharp increase from
initial estimates on Saturday of at least
1,000 killed.
"We had a meeting last night with the
governor and the other officials. The
governor said, based on their estimate,
10,000 died," Soria told Reuters. "The
devastation is so big."
Witnesses and officials described chaotic
scenes in Leyte's capital, Tacloban, a
coastal city of 220,000 about 580 km (360
miles) southeast of Manila, with hundreds
of bodies piled on the sides of roads and
pinned under wrecked houses.
The city and nearby villages as far as one
kilometer from shore were flooded by the
storm surge, leaving floating bodies and
roads choked with debris from fallen trees,
tangled power lines and flattened homes.
TV footage showed children clinging to
rooftops for their lives.
Many internet users urged prayers for
survivors in the largely Roman Catholic
nation on social media sites such as
Twitter.
"From a helicopter, you can see the extent
of devastation. From the shore and moving
a kilometer inland, there are no structures
standing. It was like a tsunami," said
Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas, who had
been in Tacloban since before the typhoon
struck the city.
"I don't know how to describe what I saw.
It's horrific."
Mila Ward, an Australian citizen and
Filipino by birth who was in Leyte on
vacation visiting her family, said she saw
hundreds of bodies on the streets.
"They were covered with blankets, plastic.
There were children and women," she said.
Six people were killed and dozens wounded
during heavy winds and storms in central
Vietnam as Haiyan approached the coast,
state media reported, even though it had
weakened substantially since hitting the
Philippines with winds gusts of up to 275
kph (170 mph).
LOOTERS TAKE WHAT THEY CAN
Vietnam authorities have moved 883,000
people in 11 central provinces to safe
zones, according to the government's
website. Despite weakening, the storm is
likely to cause heavy rains, flooding, strong
winds and mudslides as it makes its way
north in the South China Sea.
Looters rampaged through several stores in
Tacloban, witnesses said, taking whatever
they could find as rescuers' efforts to
deliver food and water were hampered by
severed roads and communications.
"They are taking everything, even
appliances like TV sets. These will be
traded later on for food," said Tecson John
Lim, the Tacloban city administrator.
"We don't have enough manpower. We
have 2,000 employees but only about 100
are reporting for work. Everyone is
attending to their families."
Lim said city officials had so far only
collected 300-400 bodies, but believed the
death toll in the city alone could be 10,000.
International aid agencies said relief efforts
in the Philippines are stretched thin after a
7.2 magnitude quake in central Bohol
province last month and displacement
caused by a conflict with Muslim rebels in
southern Zamboanga province.
The World Food Programme said it was
airlifting 40 tons of high energy biscuits,
enough to feed 120,000 people for a day,
as well as emergency supplies and
telecommunications equipment.
Tacloban city airport was all but destroyed
as seawaters swept through the city,
shattering the glass of the airport tower,
leveling the terminal and overturning
nearby vehicles.
A Reuters reporter saw five bodies inside a
chapel near the airport, placed on pews.
Airport manager Efren Nagrama, 47, said
water levels rose up to four meters (13
feet).
"It was like a tsunami. We escaped through
the windows and I held on to a pole for
about an hour as rain, seawater and wind
swept through the airport," he said. "Some
of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I
prayed hard all throughout until the water
subsided."
The airport in the hard-hit province of Leyte
was "washed out" and only military cargo
planes have been able to land on the
runway, said Energy Secretary Jericho
Petilla, a former governor of the eastern
province.
"We don't have an airport there now," he
told a Manila radio interview. "Sometimes I
don't know what we will do. The damage is
overwhelming."
"There are a lot of dead bodies. We haven't
counted them yet. We are too busy to
count," Red Cross chairman Richard
Gordon said on Saturday. "We are
managing the dead bodies, we don't want
them scattered there."
Meanwhile, more than 450,000 military
personnel have been mobilized in Vietnam,
which was bracing itself for the arrival of
Typhoon Haiyan on Sunday.
Thousands of boats and rescue vehicles
were being put on standby, mainly in
central provinces, newspaper Tuoi Tre
reported Saturday.
Some 20,000 families were being evacuated
in several districts in Da Nang city, with the
operation expected to end by 7 p.m. (1200
GMT). More than 200,000 people were
being moved out of nearby Quang Ngai
province.
All schools in Quang Nam and Binh Dinh
provinces have been closed, the newspaper
said.
"This is the strongest typhoon in history
over the East Sea," said Bui Minh Tang,
director of the Central Hydro-
Meteorological Forecasting Center.
"It can be compared with other strongest
storms on the earth such as typhoons
Andrew and Katrina in the U.S., and
typhoon Nargis in Myanmar," Tuoi Tre
quoted the official as saying.
Caroline Mills, a British travel writer who
lives near Hoi An a UNESCO World Heritage
Site and a popular tourism destination in
Quang Nam province said evacuations had
already started in her village.
"Most of our village has nowhere to go, so
will stay," she said.
"The government has opened some
schools for villagers with nowhere else to
go to take shelter. They have also told
everyone that they only need to go away
for one night."
Haiyan is expected to make landfall in the
central provinces of Vietnam early Sunday
as a category 1 or 2 typhoon, according to
the United Nation's Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. It is
expected to be downgraded to a tropical
storm on Sunday morning.
The storm entered the South China Sea
after crossing the Philippines.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-
typhoon-philippines-20131109
,0,3679286.story

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