Philippines typhoon death toll soars to 5,500

The death toll from typhoon Haiyann in central Philippines soared to 5,500 by on Wednesday with 1,757 missing and 26,136 injured, the state media said.

As another 260 bodies were retrieved from typhoon affected areas, the toll rose from 5,240 to 5,500, reported Xinhua citing the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council announced early on Wednesday.

The latest bodies comprise 207 from Tacloban city, 46 from other parts of Leyte province and seven from neighbouring Samar province.

More: http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-philippines-typhoon-death-toll-soars-to-5500-1925497

Philippine typhoon survivors begin to rebuild

Survivors began rebuilding homes destroyed by one of the world's most powerful typhoons and emergency supplies flowed into ravaged Philippine islands, as the United Nations more than doubled its estimate of people made homeless to nearly two million.

But the aid effort was still so patchy that bodies lay uncollected as rescuers tried to evacuate stricken communities on Saturday, more than a week after Typhoon Haiyan killed thousands with tree-snapping winds and tsunami-like waves.

After long delays, hundreds of international aid workers set up makeshift hospitals and trucked in supplies, while helicopters from a U.S. aircraft carrier ferried medicine and water to remote, battered areas where some families have gone without food and clean water for days.

"We are very, very worried about millions of children," U.N. Children's Fund spokesman Marixie Mercado told reporters in Geneva.

A U.N. official said in a guarded compliment many countries had come forward to help.

"The response from the international community has not been overwhelming compared to the magnitude of the disaster, but it has been very generous so far," Jens Laerke of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told the Geneva news briefing.

Captain Victoriano Sambale, a military doctor who for the past week has treated patients in a room strewn with dirt and debris in Tacloban, which bore the brunt of the storm, said there had been a change in the pace in the response.

"I can see the international support coming here," he said.

But he is still overwhelmed. "Day one we treated 600-plus patients. Day two we had 700-plus patients. Day three we lost our count."

President Benigno Aquino, caught off guard by the scale of the disaster, is scheduled to visit typhoon-affected areas on Saturday. He has been criticized for the slow pace of aid distribution and unclear estimates of casualties, especially in Tacloban, capital of hardest-hit Leyte province.

A notice board in Tacloban City Hall estimated the deaths at 4,000 on Friday, up from 2,000 a day before, in that town alone. Hours later, Tacloban mayor Alfred Romualdez apologized and said the toll was for the whole central Philippines.

The toll, written on a whiteboard, is compiled by officials who started burying bodies in a mass grave on Thursday.

Romualdez said some people may have been swept out to sea and their bodies lost after a tsunami-like wall of seawater slammed into coastal areas. One neighborhood with a population of between 10,000 and 12,000 was now deserted, he said.

The City Hall toll was the first public acknowledgement that the number of fatalities would likely far exceed an estimate given this week by Aquino, who said lives lost would be closer to 2,000 or 2,500.

Official confirmed deaths nationwide rose by more than 1,200 to 3,621 on Friday. "I hope it will not rise anymore. I hope that is the final number," said Eduardo del Rosario, director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council. "If it rises, it will probably be very slight."

U.S. HELICOPTERS AID RELIEF EFFORT

But massive logistical problems remain. Injured survivors waited in long lines under searing sun for treatment. Local authorities reported shortages of body bags, gasoline and staff to collect the dead.

"Bodies are still lying on the roads. But now at least they're in sections with Department of Health body-bags," Ian Norton, chief of a team of Australian aid workers, told Reuters.

The number of people made homeless by the storm rose to 1.9 million, up from 900,000, the U.N.'s humanitarian agency said. In Tacloban alone, at least 56,000 people face unsanitary conditions, according to the U.N.'s migration agency.

Stunned survivors in Tacloban said the toll could be many thousands.

"There are a lot of dead people on the street in our neighborhood, by the trash," said Aiza Umpacan, a 27-year-old resident of San Jose, one of the worst-hit neighborhoods.

"There are still a lot of streets that were not visited by the disaster-relief operations. They are just going through the highways, not the inner streets," he said. "The smell is getting worse, and we actually have neighbors who have been brought to hospital because they are getting sick."

Across the city, survivors have begun to rebuild. The sounds of hammers ring out. Men gather in groups to fix motorbikes or drag debris off splintered homes and wrecked streets. Most have given up searching for lost loved ones.

The preliminary number of missing as of Friday, according to the Red Cross, rose to 25,000 from 22,000 a day earlier. That could include people who have since been located, it said.

The nuclear-powered USS George Washington aircraft carrier and accompanying ships arrived off eastern Samar province on Thursday evening, carrying 5,000 crew and more than 80 aircraft.

U.S. sailors have brought food and water ashore in Tacloban and the town of Guiuan, whose airport was a U.S. naval air base in World War Two. The carrier is moored near where U.S. General Douglas MacArthur's force landed on October 20, 1944, in one of the biggest Allied victories.

Acting U.S. Ambassador Brian Goldbeck, the chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Manila, said the United States had moved 174,000 kg (383,000 lb) of emergency supplies into affected areas and evacuated nearly 3,000 people.

More: http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/11/16/us-philippines-typhoon-idINBRE9A603Q20131116

Logistical Hurdles Paralyze Relief Effort at the Center of a Typhoon’s Fury

Typhoon gridlock threatened rescue operations in the most devastated part of the Philippines on Wednesday, with aid piling up but few ways to distribute it, plentiful gasoline but no merchants willing to sell it, and an influx of emergency volunteers but no place to house them.

The intensifying frustrations of delivering aid after Typhoon Haiyan struck last week elicited a plea from the top United Nations relief official to the mayor of Tacloban, imploring him to persuade gas station owners to open so relief convoys could begin a large-scale expansion into the flattened port city of 220,000 and interior regions of Leyte Province. The gas stations have fuel in their tanks, but the owners fear theft and violence if they reopen.

“We have to have fuel, so we have to have some kind of refueling center,” Valerie Amos, the United Nations official, told the mayor, Alfred S. Romualdez, at a public meeting after she flew here for an assessment.

Mr. Romualdez told Ms. Amos that the city could not easily cope with the influx of aid workers, as practically no vehicles were available to bring them in from the airport, while food and drinking water were running out. “I’m asking those who come here, ‘Please be self-sufficient, because there’s nothing,’ ” he said.

The mayor’s best advice to residents was to leave and find shelter with relatives if they could, saying that the local authorities were struggling to provide food and water and faced difficulties in maintaining law and order.

The paralysis was epitomized by the first attempt in Tacloban to conduct a mass burial of typhoon victims, whose corpses had been putrefying for days on the streets and under piles of debris. The attempt ended in failure as trucks carrying more than 200 corpses were forced to turn back when they faced gunfire at the city limits. The identities of the gunmen were not clear.

Covered with black plastic tarpaulin, the bodies were returned to a makeshift outdoor morgue at the foot of the hill topped by City Hall, where they emitted a powerful odor in the tropical heat.

Tacloban’s paralysis was acknowledged later in the day by the United States government, which is playing a major role in the emergency effort, using military cargo planes to bring in aid and to evacuate the most vulnerable residents. In a telephone briefing from Washington, a senior official assigned to the effort said that it was focused mainly on food, water, shelter and medicine, but that the provision of fuel in the city was “very much on our radar screen — that is a whole part of the logistical morass we’re working our way through.”

Another senior American official in the briefing said that the number of American uniformed personnel on the ground in the Philippines, currently at about 300, would rise to 1,000 in the next few days, with most coming from a Marine base in Okinawa, Japan. The official said the United States was helping transport Filipino soldiers assigned to the disaster zone, which cuts through the middle of the country.

The American officials also said a land route into Tacloban had been reopened, which would ease the bottleneck at the airport. “It was like squeezing orange juice through a straw,” one said. “Now we have more straws.”

International relief groups said they were rapidly escalating their response in Tacloban and elsewhere. Doctors Without Borders, the Paris-based medical agency, said its teams had traveled by car, boat, plane and helicopter to some of the outlying areas of northern Cebu Island, eastern Samar Island, Panay Island and western Leyte Province, which neither the Philippine government nor other agencies had been able to reach. The teams found desperation, the group said in a statement. The village of Guiuan in Samar was flattened and half of Roxas City on Panay was destroyed.

“Access is extremely difficult and is preventing people from receiving help,” said Dr. Natasha Reyes, the group’s emergency coordinator in the Philippines.

Despite the problems in Tacloban, the World Food Program said Wednesday that it had managed to provide family-size packets of rice and canned goods to nearly 50,000 residents and that 500 tons of rice was en route.

Mayor Romualdez said the city desperately needed trucks and drivers to distribute shipments of food piling up at the airport, as well as more trucks, heavy equipment and personnel to retrieve decaying corpses from the wreckage across the city.

“I have to decide at every meeting which is more important, relief goods or picking up cadavers,” he said.


The mayor, a nephew of Imelda Marcos, the former first lady who grew up in Tacloban, denied persistent rumors of gunfights among the increasingly hungry and thirsty population, saying that business owners and others were firing only warning shots. “That’s why sometimes you hear gunshots, but it is to ward off looting,” he said.

Jerry T. Yaokasin, the vice mayor, said in an interview that Filipino soldiers and police officers might be stretched too thin to provide security in Tacloban even as they try to reach other coastal communities to assess damage. He suggested that foreign forces might be needed for work like providing security for gas stations to reopen.

“If the United States will come in, if it will be allowed to come, or if the United Nations can come in, it will really help us secure the city,” he said.

An official in Washington said it was unlikely that the American military would be used in this way. “It’s really a host government issue — they need to tackle this,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

With service stations closed, gasoline and diesel fuel, at any price, have almost completely disappeared, immobilizing aid vehicles and private cars alike. Scavengers have already siphoned fuel from the large numbers of vehicles crushed, overturned or abandoned.

The typhoon did not just destroy the electricity grid here. The storm surge, when the sea level rose by as much as 13 feet in minutes, disabled most of the city’s generators, Mr. Yaokasin said, and the lack of fuel has limited operations for the remaining units.

With food stripped from the shelves of many grocery stores, surviving store owners are refusing to bring in new supplies and reopen their stores, Mr. Yaokasin said.

“The police visibility has to be there to the point that businesses feel the security to open their businesses,” he said.

The death toll remained a mystery. The Philippine government put the official toll at 2,275 as of Wednesday. Few deaths have been confirmed in Tacloban because officials say they are counting only bodies that they have collected or formally recorded.

But Mr. Yaokasin said the leader of a single neighborhood of 4,000 had notified him that a quarter of the residents had died.

Jennifer Cicco, the Philippines Red Cross administrator for Leyte Island, said thousands of people were missing and were presumed to have been swept out to sea. Arié Lévy, the president of Rescuers Without Borders, a French nonprofit group, said he had visited a village a mile beyond Tacloban on Wednesday morning and estimated that he saw a thousand bodies
.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/world/asia/aid-groups-in-philippines-fear-more-devastation-has-yet-to-be-revealed.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0

Philippine president says typhoon death toll overstated

Philippine President Benigno Aquino said local officials had overstated the death toll from Typhoon Haiyan, saying it was closer to 2,000 or 2,500 than the 10,000 previously estimated, comments that drew scepticism from some aid workers.

The government has been overwhelmed by the typhoon, which flattened Tacloban, coastal capital of Leyte province where several local officials have said they feared 10,000 people died, many drowning in a tsunami-like surge of seawater.

Rescue workers have yet to reach scores of other towns and villages in the path of one of the strongest storms on record, five days after it smashed into the central Philippines.

Aquino, who has been on the defensive over his handling of the disaster, said the government was still gathering information from various storm-struck areas and the death toll may rise. "Ten thousand, I think, is too much," Aquino told CNN in an interview. "There was emotional drama involved with that particular estimate.

"We're hoping to be able to contact something like 29 municipalities left wherein we still have to establish their numbers, especially for the missing, but so far 2,000, about 2,500, is the number we are working on as far as deaths are concerned," he said.

A presidential spokesman said Aquino referred to estimated deaths. Official confirmed deaths stood at 1,774 on Tuesday, with only 84 missing, a figure aid workers consider widely inaccurate.

Some aid workers also expressed skepticism at Aquino's dramatically lower death toll.

"Probably it will be higher because numbers are just coming in. Many of the areas we cannot access," Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, told Reuters.

The preliminary number of missing, according to the Red Cross, is 22,000. Pang cautioned that figure could include people who have since been located. "They report their relatives missing but they don't alert us when they are found," she said.

UNPRECEDENTED DISASTER FOR THE PHILIPPINES

More the 670,000 people have been displaced by the storm and many have no access to food, water or medicine, the United Nations said.

With international aid efforts picking up, relief supplies have begun pouring into Tacloban along roads flanked with corpses and canyons of debris.

Natasha Reyes, emergency coordinator in the Philippines at Médecins Sans Frontières, described the devastation as unprecedented for the disaster-prone archipelago.

"There are hundreds of other towns and villages stretched over thousands of kilometres that were in the path of the typhoon and with which all communication has been cut," Reyes said.

U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos, who is in the Philippines, called the scale of destruction "shocking".

Aquino has declared a state of national calamity and deployed hundreds of soldiers to control looting in Tacloban, a once-vibrant port city of 220,000 that is now a wasteland.

The local government was wiped out by the storm, said Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas. Officials were dead, missing or too overcome with grief to work. Of the city's 293 police officers, only 20 had shown up for duty, he said.

Medical workers are treating the injured at evacuation centres for lacerations and other wounds. But many complain of a lack of food and poor hygiene.

One woman sat on a bench in a hospital in the city, her decomposing 5-month-old baby in her arms, wrapped in a black jacket. The infant was sick before the typhoon. After the storm, she sought medicine in the hospital. There was none. Her baby, she said, convulsed and died.

"It feels like I'm going crazy since I keep thinking how we can solve our problems. We want to go back home, but we can't even if my baby's starting to smell. We just want to go back," she said on ABS-CBN television.

FOREIGN MEDICAL TEAMS ARRIVE

U.N. officials said getting food, medicine and clean water to the disaster zone were the priorities, along with sanitation and shelter.

The World Health Organisation said teams from Belgium, Japan, Israel and Norway had arrived in the Philippines to set up field hospitals. It said other countries were expected to provide medical teams.

More than 250 U.S. forces were on the ground too, and a senior Marine official told Pentagon reporters he expected that number to grow every day.

"Our priority for supplying aid is potable water, food, shelter, hygiene products, and medical supplies," said Pentagon spokesman George Little.

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington will arrive later this week, carrying about 5,000 sailors and more than 80 aircraft. It has been joined by four other U.S. Navy ships.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said the development lender was considering boosting its conditional cash transfer program for the Philippines.

Rescuers have reached some remote parts of the coast that were previously cut off, such as Guiuan, a city of 40,000 people that suffered massive destruction from high winds but was spared the storm surge that washed over Tacloban. Local officials say 85 people were killed in Guiuan, with 24 missing.

The typhoon also levelled Basey, a seaside town in Samar province about 10 km (6 miles) across a bay from Tacloban. Local officials say 80 people were killed in Basey.

Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said the economic damage in the coconut- and rice-growing region would likely shave 1 percentage point off of economic growth in 2014.

The overall financial cost of the destruction was harder to assess. Initial estimates varied widely, with a report from German-based CEDIM Forensic Disaster Analysis putting the total at $8 billion to $19 billion. (Additional reporting by Rosemarie Francisco in Manila, and Phil Stewart and Susan Heavey in Washington. Writing by Dean Yates. Editing by Jason Szep)

More: http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/11/13/phillipines-typhoon-haiyan-idINDEE9AA0CI20131113?feedType=RSS&feedName=globalCoverage2

UN to launch major aid appeal for battered Philippines

The United Nations was Tuesday poised to appeal for hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency aid for the tyhoon-ravaged Philippines, as a massive international relief effort began to build momentum.

UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos is in Manila to launch a "flash appeal" for cash, while the US and Britain deployed warships carrying thousands of soldiers to assist in a vast operation to help nearly 10 million people affected by Friday's super typhoon.

After famished survivors ransacked aid convoys, Philippines authorities deployed armoured vehicles and set up checkpoints in the devastated city of Tacloban on Tuesday to stop desperate victims raiding food and medical supplies.

Almost 10 percent of the Philippines' population have been affected after Super Typhoon Haiyan smashed into the nation's central islands, leaving at least 10,000 people feared dead while 660,000 have lost their homes, according to the UN.

The Pentagon said the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, with 5,000 sailors and more than 80 aircraft aboard, will head to the United States' close Asian ally from Hong Kong to join 180 US Marines assisting in the humanitarian efforts on the ground.

Britain boosted its aid to £10 million as Prime Minister David Cameron said HMS Daring, a destroyer, would sail to the Philippines "at full speed" from its current deployment in Singapore, joined by a Royal Air Force C-17 transport plane.

Dead bodies still litter the wreckage across devastated communities in the central islands, with whole districts of coastal towns reduced to piles of splintered wood.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the aid effort "must expand urgently in the days ahead", while the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement appealed for nearly $95 million to provide 100,000 families with food, water and shelter over 18 months.

As the global effort mobilised, friends and foes alike among the Philippines' neighbours offered assistance, with Taiwan and China promising to put aside their differences to join in the relief effort.

The Australian government pledged Aus$10 million ($9.38 million) in relief, with a team of medics set to leave Wednesday to join disaster experts already on the ground.

Tokyo said it would supply $10 million in grants to provide evacuees with emergency shelters and other assistance, as reports said Japan could be readying to dispatch its self defense forces to help in the relief effort.

About 100 Japanese citizens in the Philippines are still unaccounted for after the typhoon.

Indonesia, another southeast Asian nation frequently hit by natural disasters, pledged $2 million in cash and emergency supplies, with a Hercules aircraft set to depart Wednesday carrying food, medicines, water filters and generators.

China, where seven people were reported killed by the typhoon, is to give $100,000 towards the aid effort, with state-run Global Times newspaper saying Tuesday that a territorial row between China and the Philippines should not affect such decisions.

"It's a must to aid typhoon victims in the Philippines," the paper, which is close to the ruling Communist party, said in an editorial. "China's international image is of vital importance to its interests. If it snubs Manila this time, China will suffer great losses", it added.

And despite a diplomatic row triggered by the fatal shooting of a 65-year-old crew member of a Taiwanese fishing boat on May 9 by a Filipino coastguard patrol, Taiwan sent two C-130 Hercules transport aircraft carrying relief goods and pledged $200,000 in cash.

Vietnam, itself faced with mass evacuations as a weakened Haiyan swung through its territory Monday, has offered aid worth $100,000 and vowed to stand by the Philippine people.

The Philippine Red Cross on Tuesday issued a heartfelt thanks for the international support directed at the country.

"We can only say that we love you for all the things you have done for us and are doing for us," Corazon Alma G. De Leon, secretary of the board of governors told a press conference in Sydney.

Other aid mobilised includes:

-- South Korea approved five million dollars in emergency aid and dispatched a 40-member team including medical personnel and rescuers to Tacloban, its foreign ministry said. Samsung Group donated one million dollars through international aid groups.

-- The European Commission said it would give three million euros ($4 million) toward relief efforts.

-- Germany's embassy in Manila said an initial shipment of 23 tonnes of aid was being flown in and German rescue teams were already at work.

-- Japan is sending a disaster relief and medical team of 25 people, while Malaysia also readied a relief crew and Singapore offered cash aid.

-- New Zealand increased its humanitarian relief to NZ$2.15 million ($1.78 million), while Canada has promised up to $5 million to aid organisations.

-- UN children's fund UNICEF sent a cargo plane carrying 60 tonnes of aid including shelters and medical kits while refugee agency UNHCR organised an airlift.

-- The ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management will send an initial $500,000 in aid from Subang, Malaysia.

-- Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said it was sending 200 tonnes of aid including medicine, tents and hygiene kits to arrive mid-week.

More: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/UN-to-launch-major-aid-appeal-for-battered-Philippines/articleshow/25639860.cms

‘I was so afraid that the roof might be blown off:’ An aid worker on the typhoon’s impact

The destruction has been described as tsunami-like with aerial pictures showing flattened fishing villages, large ships flung inland and traumatized survivors desperate for clean water, food, shelter – and any news of missing loved ones.

Typhoon Haiyan has come and gone – pounding a group of islands in the central Philippines beginning last Friday and leaving behind a trail of loss and destruction.


As night fell in the Philippines, hundreds of thousands of displaced Filipinos hoped the next day would bring speedier relief efforts and security. Parts of the country have reported looting.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino declared a national state of calamity in typhoon-affected areas.

“My appeal to you all is remaining calm, praying, co-operating with, and assisting one another are the things that will help us to rise from this calamity,” he said.

The reported death toll of 942 is expected to climb into the thousands – with one area alone, Tacloban, reportedly facing more than 10,000 dead.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) was organizing airlifts to deliver high-energy biscuits.

“We need to make sure that the humanitarian community works together with the Government of the Philippines and coordinates efforts so we can reach as many people as quickly as possible,” said WFP executive director Ertharin Cousin in a statement.

Co-ordination, information and ability to reach survivors are the key challenges.

The medical humanitarian aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, said parts of the typhoon-affected areas had been cut off from communication and that the group was operating in “a relative black hole of information.”

“To be honest, no one knows what the situation is like in these more rural and remote places, and it’s going to be some time before we have a full picture,” Natasha Reyes, MSF’s emergency co-ordinator in the Philippines, said in a statement.

“This sort of disaster is unprecedented in the Philippines. The effect is something like a massive earthquake followed by huge floods,” she added.

Like all aid agencies, World Vision is trying to increase its relief efforts and reach survivors. An air cargo of 5,000 thousand blankets and 3,000 tarpaulins arrived in the capital Manila Monday. The group has been delivering programs for 55 years in the Philippines. Canadians sponsor 15,676 children in the country.

Aaron Aspi is one of the country’s 600 World Vision staff and he spoke to the Globe and Mail from Cebu city late Monday night. He explained that storm surges 7 metres high came crashing down on coastal villages in the northern part of the island, destroying 90 per cent of structures. Here is an edited and condensed version of the interview. First, he described how most of the deaths happened:

“So many people drowned. The impact of this storm was really massive. It crashed through structures – even those structures that are sturdy enough to withstand the magnitude of the typhoon were really mercilessly brought down to ruins.

“Lots of thriving communities that were once full of life and activities and livelihood are now reduced to wasteland.”

Where were you when the storm hit landfall?

I was in another island altogether. I was supporting relief efforts of World Vision in the [October] earthquake-hit areas of Bohol [province] when the typhoon struck.

I was on the top most floor of the building and I can really feel the building shaking but it was not from the tremors on the ground but it was from the ferocious winds that were crashing on the roof. I really got scared and I can hear the heavy howling sounds and the fierce winds and rains sweeping through trees and uprooting them.

I just realized its immensity – even if it [the typhoon] was not on full blast in Bohol because it was just a signal number three and the highest storm signal that was raised was four. I was somehow feeling confident it wasn’t really that bad but when it was there I was so afraid that the roof might be blown off and I was walking around the corridors pausing for a while from time to time to relax myself as I clutched on to the railings because I might get knocked off.

It was really really scary.

What is the biggest challenge you face right now?

The biggest challenge right now is stepping up travel routes that are safe and accessible – and lots of roads right now are impassable because of huge boulders and rubble and other debris lying around.

Is the situation in Cebu city, where you are right now, relatively calm?

Right now in Cebu city the power and water supply has been restored but as you go to the outskirts and far flung areas that’s where you can really have a grasp of how the devastation is really taking a toll on the lives of those people who have lost everything that they own. Along the road children are begging for food and water and are asking for help – and that’s really heartbreaking for me.

What are the most urgent needs facing survivors?

Right now the most urgent needs are food and water and other emergency relief supplies – like sleeping mats, blankets, mosquito nets. Those kinds of things would really go a long way for those families who have lost their belongings.

Sad to say, but unfortunately in some parts of the Philippines – in Tacloban – there has been widespread looting. The municipality is now under a state of emergency because the government needs to have more power to enforce public safety and peace and order in those areas. People are growing desperate and they are resorting to lawless activity in order to survive.

You are Filipino. Do you think your government has the capacity to deal with crisis?

Right now it will take all concerted efforts – both of government and the humanitarian actors, even the civil society and volunteers, just everyone to help each other in the best way possible.

We may get tired of seeing these horrible images we see now on television and [in] photos but this would be their environment for the next couple of months. And right now we are on alert for another typhoon that is heading our way – but thankfully it is not as strong as [Typhoon] Haiyan but the torrential rains could really hamper the ongoing relief operations.

More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/i-was-so-afraid-that-the-roof-might-be-blown-off-an-aid-worker-on-the-typhoons-impact/article15384951/

Typhoon Haiyan makes landfall in Vietnam

Haiyan made landfall in northern Vietnam early Monday as a tropical storm, just days after leaving massive destruction in the Philippines. The Vietnamese national weather forecast agency said Haiyan made landfall in northern province of Quang Ninh at 5 a.m. as a tropical storm and was moving toward southern China, where it is expected to weaken to a low depression later Monday. No casualties or major damage have been reported.

It slammed into six central Philippine islands on Friday as the strongest typhoon of the year and one of the strongest on record. It appears to be the deadliest storm - and natural disaster - on record to hit the Philippines, with officials saying that as many as 10,000 people are feared dead.

Later Monday, the storm was expected to enter southern China and further weaken while dropping torrential rains on the provinces of Guangxi and Hunan. Guangxi officials advised fishermen to stay onshore and told residents to take precautions against flooding and landslides.

More: http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/typhoon-haiyan-makes-landfall-in-vietnam/article1-1149663.aspx

Typhoon Haiyan, potentially strongest storm ever to make landfall, hits Philippines

The strongest typhoon in the world this year and possibly the most powerful ever to hit land battered the central Philippines on Friday, forcing millions of people to flee to safer ground, cutting power lines and blowing apart houses.

Haiyan, a category-5 super typhoon, bore down on the northern tip of Cebu Province, a popular tourist destination with the country's second-largest city, after lashing the islands of Leyte and Samar with 275 kph (170 mph) wind gusts and 5-6 metre (15-19 ft) waves.

Authorities warned more than 12 million people were at risk, including residents of Cebu City, home to around 2.5 million people, and areas still reeling from a deadly 2011 storm and a 7.1-magnitude quake last month.

"The super typhoon likely made landfall with winds near 195 mph (313 kph). This makes Haiyan the strongest tropical cyclone (typhoon) on record to make landfall," said Jeff Masters, a hurricane expert and director of meteorology at US-based Weather Underground.

Typhoons and cyclones of that magnitude can blow apart storm-proof shelters due to the huge pressure they create, which can suck walls out and blow roofs off buildings.

About a million people had taken shelter in more than 20 provinces, after Philippine President Benigno Aquino appealed to people in Haiyan's path to evacuate from danger spots, such as river banks, coastal villages and mountain slopes.

"Our school is now packed with evacuees," an elementary school teacher in Southern Leyte who only gave her name as Feliza told a radio station. Leyte and Southern Leyte are about 630 km (390 miles) southeast of the capital Manila.

The storm's path includes the resort island of Boracay and other holiday destinations.

"Please do not underestimate this typhoon. It is very powerful. We can feel each gust," Roger Mercado, governor of Southern Leyte province, adjacent to Leyte, told DZBB radio. "We lost power and all roads are impassable because of fallen trees. We just have to pray."

In Samar, contact was lost with some towns and villages, said local officials. More than 41,000 people have been evacuated in the province, one of the country's poorest.

"The whole province has no power," Samar governor Sharee Tan told Reuters by telephone. Fallen trees, toppled electric posts and other debris blocked roads, she added.

On Bantayan Island, off Cebu's northern coast, one person was missing and another pinned beneath a tree, said Neil Sanchez, head of Cebu's provincial disaster agency.

"We still don't know if the person was just injured or a fatality because the phone lines were cut," he said.

Torrential rain

Authorities halted ferry services and fishing operations, while nearly 200 local flights had been suspended. Commuter bus services were also stopped as the storm dumped torrential rain, ripped iron roofs off houses and snapped trees.

Twenty navy ships, three C-130 air force cargo planes and 32 military helicopters and aircraft were on standby. An army spokesman on southern Mindanao island said a man was killed in a shelter area when he was electrocuted by a toppled power line.

Schools, offices and shops in the central Philippines were closed, with hospitals, soldiers and emergency workers were preparing for rescue operations.

The state weather bureau said Haiyan was expected to exit the Philippines on Saturday and move towards the South China Sea, where it could become even stronger and threaten Vietnam or China.

The world's strongest recorded typhoon, cyclone or hurricane to previously make landfall was Hurricane Camille in 1969, which hit Mississippi with 190 mph winds, said Weather Underground's Masters.

An average of 20 typhoons slam into the Philippines every year. In 2011, typhoon Washi killed 1,200 people, displaced 300,000 and destroyed more than 10,000 homes. Haiyan is the 24th such storm to batter the Philippines this year.

Typhoon Bopha last year flattened three coastal towns on the southern island of Mindanao, killing 1,100 people and causing damage estimated at $1.04 billion.

In September, category-5 typhoon Usagi, with winds gusting of up to 240 kph (149 mph), battered the northern island of Batanes before causing damage in southern China.

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One of most intense typhoons ever recorded hits Philippines

One of the most intense typhoons ever recorded tore into the Philippines on Friday, triggering flash floods and ripping down buildings as millions of people huddled indoors.

Super Typhoon Haiyan smashed into the central island of Samar, about 600 kilometres southeast of Manila, at 4.40am (2040 GMT Thursday) and was travelling quickly northwest, state meteorologist Romeo Cajulis told AFP.

President Benigno Aquino had on Thursday warned his countrymen to make all possible preparations for Haiyan, which was packing monster wind gusts of nearly 380 kilometres (235 miles) an hour as it approached the Philippines.

"To our local officials, your constituents are facing a serious peril. Let us do all we can while (Haiyan) has not yet hit land," Aquino said in a nationally televised address.

"We can minimize the effects of this typhoon if we help each other. Let us remain calm, especially in buying our primary needs, and in moving to safer places."

Haiyan had maximum sustained winds as it approached the Philippines on Friday morning of 315 kilometres an hour, and gusts of 379 kilometres an hour, according to the US navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Centre.

The Philippine state weather service, which typically gives lower wind readings, said the maximum gusts on Friday morning were 275 kilometres an hour.

But even that reading would easily make Haiyan the world's strongest typhoon this year, according to David Michael Padua, a meteorologist with the Weather Philippines Foundation, a storm monitoring organization that runs the www.weather.com.ph website.

A prominent American meteorologist, Dr Jeff Masters, wrote on www.wunderground.com that Haiyan was one of the most intense typhoons ever recorded.

Aquino warned areas within the expected 600-kilometre typhoon front would be exposed to severe flooding as well as devastating winds, while coastal areas may see waves six metres (20 feet) high.

In the eastern coastal city of Tacloban, one of the first areas to be hit, streets were flooded and some buildings were torn down, according to footage broadcast on ABS CBN television on Friday morning.

More than 125,000 people in the most vulnerable areas had been moved to evacuation centres before Haiyan hit, according to the civil defence office, and millions of others braced for the typhoon in their homes.

Authorities said schools in the storm's path were closed, ferry services suspended and fishermen ordered to secure their vessels.

In the capital of Manila, which was not directly in the typhoon's path but still expected to feel some of its impact, many schools were also closed.

Philippine Airlines, Cebu Pacific and other carriers announced the suspension of hundreds of flights, mostly domestic but also some international.

Cajulis said Haiyan was travelling quickly, at 39 kilometres an hour, and would travel across the country towards the South China Sea throughout Friday.

There were no immediate reports of casualties. State weather forecaster Glaize Escullar said on Thursday Haiyan was expected to hit areas still recovering from a devastating storm in 2011 and from a 7.1-magnitude quake last month.

They include the central island of Bohol, the epicentre of the earthquake that killed 222 people, where at least 5,000 survivors are still living in tents while waiting for new homes.

Other vulnerable areas are the port cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan on the southern island of Mindanao, where flash floods induced by Tropical Storm Washi killed more than 1,000 people in December 2011.

The Philippines is battered by an average of 20 major storms or typhoons each year, many of them deadly, but scientists have said climate change may be increasing their ferocity and frequency.

The Philippines endured the world's strongest storm of 2012, when Typhoon Bopha left about 2,000 people dead or missing on Mindanao island in December.

More: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/One-of-most-intense-typhoons-ever-recorded-hits-Philippines/articleshow/25407796.cms