Heartbreaking Before and After Photos Show how Typhoon Haiyan Flattened Entire City of Tacloban
- The official death toll from the disaster rose to 10,000 + today, though authorities have said they expect that to rise
- Tacloban, a city of about 220,000 people, bore the full force of the winds and the tsunami-like storm surges
- Dramatic photos show full extent of the ravaged city, which has been left with dead bodies in the streets
- Pallets of supplies and teams of doctors are waiting to get into the city of Tacloban
- Challenges of delivering the assistance means few in the stricken city have received help
By Anna Edwards, Daily Mail UK, 13 November 2013
It was once a vibrant city, packed with neat rows of colourful homes surrounded by lush green parks.
But now all that remains is a husk of Tacloban; the place that so many called home is now a grey and barren wasteland after deadly Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines city, crushing everything in its way.
These heartbreaking aerial photos show how every corner of the city was torn up by the deadly storm.
The official death toll from the disaster rose to over 10,000 today, though authorities
have said they expect that to rise markedly
Tacloban, a city of about 220,000 people on Leyte island, bore the full force of the winds and the tsunami-like storm surges Friday.
The official death toll from the disaster rose to 1,774 today, though authorities have said they expect that to rise dramatically. They fear estimates of 10,000 dead are accurate and might be low.
Bodies piled in the streets as makeshift mortuaries are overrun and Philippine typhoon rescue teams warn death toll will 'rise sharply' from the 10,000 already confirmed
Soldiers hold back desperate Filipinos trying to escape their typhoon-ravaged region as 3,000 people try to board two aircraft that can only take a few hundred
Race against time to save the drowned towns: Rescuers battle to reach site levelled by Typhoon Haiyan while city of 35,000 is 80% underwater
The dead, decomposing and stinking, litter the streets of the city or are buried in the debris.
Most of the city is in ruins, a tangled mess of destroyed houses, cars and trees, as these pictures show. Malls, garages and shops have all been stripped of food and water by hungry residents.
The loss of life appears to be concentrated in Tacloban and surrounding areas, including a portion of Samar island that is separated from Leyte island by a strait. It is possible that other devastated areas are so isolated they have not yet been reached.
Most of the city is in ruins, a tangled mess of destroyed houses, cars and trees. Malls,
garages and shops have all been stripped of food and water by hungry residents
Horrifying Footage of Devastating Typhoon Haiyan
Desperately needed food, water and medical aid are only trickling into this city that took
the worst blow from Typhoon Haiyan - five days after the deadly storm hit.
Nearly a week after what could be the Philippines' deadliest disaster, aid is coming - pallets of supplies and teams of doctors are waiting to get into Tacloban.
But the challenges of delivering the assistance means few in the stricken city have received help.
Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said relief goods were getting into the city, and the supply should increase now that the airport and a bridge to the island were open.
'We are not going to leave one person behind - one living person behind,' he said. 'We will help, no matter how difficult, no matter how inaccessible.'
The U.N. said it had released $25 million in emergency funds to pay for shelter materials and household items, and for assistance with the provision of health services, safe water supplies and sanitation facilities.
Pallets of supplies and teams of doctors are waiting to get into Tacloban -
but the challenges of delivering the assistance means few in the stricken city have received help
The USS George Washington is headed toward the region with massive amounts of water and food, but the Pentagon said the aircraft carrier won't arrive until Thursday. The U.S. also said it is providing $20 million in immediate aid.
Aid totaling tens of millions of dollars has been pledged by many other countries, including Japan, Australia and Britain, which is sending a Royal Navy vessel.
'We need help. Nothing is happening. We haven't eaten since yesterday afternoon,' pleaded a weeping Aristone Balute, an 81-year-old woman who failed to get a flight out of Tacloban for Manila, the capital.
'There is a huge amount that we need to do. We have not been able to get into the remote communities,'
U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said in Manila, launching an appeal for $301 million to help the more than 11 million people estimated to be affected by the storm.
'Even in Tacloban, because of the debris and the difficulties with logistics and so on, we have not been able to get in the level of supply that we would want to. We are going to do as much as we can to bring in more,' she said.
Doctors in Tacloban said they were desperate for medicine. Medics at a small makeshift clinic
said they had treated around 1,000 people for cuts, bruises, lacerations and deep wounds
In Cebu, to the southwest of Tacloban, the Philippine air force has been sending three C-130s back and forth to Tacloban from dawn to dusk, and had delivered £400,000 of relief supplies, Lt. Col. Marciano Jesus Guevara said.
A lack of electricity in Tacloban means planes can't land there at night.
Guevara said the C-130s have transported nearly 3,000 civilians out of the disaster zone, and that the biggest problem in Tacloban is a lack of clean drinking water.
'Water is life,' he said. 'If you have water with no food, you'll survive.'
A team from Médecins Sans Frontières, complete with medical supplies, arrived in Cebu island Saturday looking for a flight to Tacloban, but hadn't left by Tuesday. A spokesman for the group said it was 'difficult to tell' when it would be able to leave.
'We are in contact with the authorities, but the (Tacloban) airport is only for the Philippines military use,' Lee Pik Kwan said in a telephone interview.
There are reports there is no evidence of any organized delivery of food, water or medical supplies, though piles of aid have begun to arrive at the airport. Some people lined up to get water from a hose, presumably from the city supply.
Thousands of typhoon victims were trying to get out of Tacloban.
They are camping at the airport in a desperate bid to try and leave the ruined city
Doctors in Tacloban said they were desperate for medicine. At small makeshift clinic with shattered windows beside the city's ruined airport tower, army and air force medics said they had treated around 1,000 people for cuts, bruises, lacerations and deep wounds.
'It's overwhelming,' said air force Capt. Antonio Tamayo. 'We need more medicine. We cannot give anti-tetanus vaccine shots because we have none.'
The longer survivors go without access to clean water, food, shelter and medical help, the greater chance of disease breaking out and people dying as a result of wounds sustained in the storm.
Thousands of typhoon victims were trying to get out of Tacloban. They camped at the airport and ran onto the tarmac when planes came in, surging past a broken iron fence and a few soldiers and police trying to control them. Most didn't make it aboard the military flights out of the city.
There is growing concern about recovering corpses from throughout the disaster zone. 'It really breaks your heart when you see them,' said Maj. Gen. Romeo Poquiz, commander of the 2nd Air Division.
'We're limited with manpower, the expertise, as well as the trucks that have to transport them to different areas for identification,' Poquiz said. 'Do we do a mass burial, because we can't identify them anymore? If we do a mass burial, where do you place them?'
The city is now a grey shell of what it was: Tacloban bore the full force
of the winds and the tsunami-like storm surges on Friday
Most Tacloban residents spent a rainy night wherever they could - in the ruins of destroyed houses, in the open along roadsides and shredded trees. Some slept under tents brought in by the government or relief groups.
'There is no help coming in. They know this is a tragedy. They know our needs are urgent. Where is the shelter?' said Aristone Balute's granddaughter, Mylene, who was also at the airport. 'We are confused. We don't know who is in charge.'
Damaged roads and other infrastructure are complicating relief efforts. Government officials and police and army officers are in many cases among the victims themselves, hampering coordination. The typhoon destroyed military buildings that housed 1,000 soldiers in Leyte province.
There were other distractions, including a jailbreak in Tacloban. Army Brig. Gen. Virgilio Espineli, the deputy regional military commander, said he wasn't sure how many of the 600 inmates fled.
Officials fear estimates of 10,000 dead are accurate and might be low.
The dead, decomposing and stinking, litter the streets or are buried in the debris.
At Matnog, the port for ferries leaving for Samar island, dozens of trucks piled high with aid were waiting to cross. In Manila, soldiers loaded pallets of water, medical supplies and food into C-130 planes bound for the disaster area.
For now, relief has come to a lucky few, including Joselito Caimoy, a 42-year-old truck driver. He was able to get his wife, son and 3-year-old daughter on a flight out of Tacloban. They embraced in a tearful goodbye, but Caimoy stayed behind to guard what's left of his home and property.
'People are just scavenging in the streets. People are asking food from relatives, friends. The devastation is too much. ... The malls, the grocery stories have all been looted,' he said. 'They're empty. People are hungry. And they (the authorities) cannot control the people.'
The storm also killed eight people in southern China and inflicted hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to farming and fishing industries, Chinese state media reported Tuesday.
The Philippines, an archipelago nation of more than 7,000 islands, is annually buffeted by tropical storms and typhoons, but Haiyan was an especially large catastrophe. Its winds were among the strongest ever recorded, and it may have killed 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.