Survivors move belongings after Haiyan battered Tacloban City yesterday.
MANILA: A powerful typhoon is believed to have killed 1,200 people in the Philippines, the Red Cross said yesterday, as rescue workers raced to reach towns devastated by tsunami-like waves.
A day after Super Typhoon Haiyan whipped across the central Philippines with maximum sustained winds of around 315 kmph, a picture emerged of entire communities having been flattened. Authorities said that, aside from the winds, storm surges of up to three metres swept into coastal towns and inland, destroying countless homes.
“Imagine a 1km strip deep inland, and all the shanties, everything, destroyed,” Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said after visiting coastal towns in Leyte, one of the worst-hit provinces in the east of the archipelago. “They were just like matchsticks flung inland. All houses were destroyed.”
The official death toll last night was 138.
But with rescue workers yet to reach or communicate with ravaged communities across a 600km stretch of islands, authorities said they were unable to give a proper assessment of how many people had been killed.
Philippine Red Cross Secretary General Gwendolyn Pang said she estimated 1,200 people had died.
“This is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like tumbleweed and the streets are strewn with debris,” said Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, the head of a UN disaster assessment coordination team which visited Leyte. “The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami,” he said, referring to the 2004 disaster that claimed about 220,000 lives.
Stampa made his comments after arriving in Tacloban, the destroyed capital of Leyte with a population of 220,000.
More than 100 bodies were littered in and around Tacloban’s airport, according to the manager.
Journalists who arrived in Tacloban on a military aircraft encountered dazed survivors wandering amid the carnage asking for water, while others sorted through what was left of their destroyed homes.
One resident, Dominador Gullena, cried as he recounted his escape but the loss of his neighbours. “My family evacuated. I thought our neighbours did the same, but they didn’t.”
Eight bodies had been laid to rest inside the airport’s chapel, which had also been damaged.
Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla reached the fishing town of Palo, about 10km from Tacloban, by helicopter and said he believed “hundreds” of people had died in that area.
Pope Francis tweeted his support for the victims: “I ask all of you to join me in prayer for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, especially those in the beloved islands of the Philippines.”
Military, government relief workers and non-governmental organisations battled to reach communities and deliver supplies.
About 15,000 soldiers were in the disaster zones, helping in the rescue effort, army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Ramon Zagala said.
Zagala said helicopters were flying rescuers into priority areas, while infantry units across the affected areas were proceeding on foot or in military trucks.
Nearly 800,000 people in danger zones had been moved to evacuation centres, while thousands of boats across the archipelago were ordered to remain secured at ports. Hundreds of flights were cancelled.
Aquino said last night it appeared some communities had not heeded the warnings. “I hesitate to say this, but it seems that Tacloban was not that prepared, shall we say, compared with other areas,” he told reporters.
Haiyan’s wind strength made it the strongest typhoon in the world this year and one of the most intense.
It exited into the South China Sea yesterday and tracked towards Vietnam, where more than 200,000 people crammed into storm shelters. It is expected to make landfall in central Vietnam today, with millions of people thought to be in its path.
AFP
