TACLOBAN, Philippines — You can see them everywhere. On the side of the road. Under what appears to be a bus shelter, a jaunty “I (heart) Tacloban” sign hanging overhead. Lined up on sidewalks.
Bodies — some crudely covered, others left exposed to the burning sun — added another hellish element to survival in Tacloban on Monday, three days after Super Typhoon Haiyan flattened countless buildings and claimed untold lives.
“There are too many people dead,” said Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross. “We have bodies in the water, bodies on the bridges, bodies on the side of the road.”
Troops and aid organizations battled blocked roads and devastating damage Monday to deliver help to stranded Filipinos struggling to survive the powerful storm’s aftermath, even as another tropical system moved in to deliver more unwanted rain.
Survivors rooted through the splintered wreckage of their homes searching for loved ones who may be buried beneath. Others scrambled to find food and water.
Officials worry as many as 10,000 could be dead.
“We’ve heard reports that people are walking around aimlessly, completely desperate,” Dr. Natasha Reyes, the Philippines emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, said in a piece posted on the group’s website.
‘Worse than hell’
Magina Fernandez, who was trying to get out of Tacloban at the city’s crippled airport, described the situation there as “worse than hell.”
“Get international help to come here now — not tomorrow, now,” she said, directing some of her anger at Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, who toured some of the hardest-hit areas Sunday.
That aid began to flow in Monday. U.N. and U.S. civilian disaster assessment teams were on the scene, as were Japan-based U.S. Marines. The Marines were to outfit the shattered Tacloban airport with lights, radar and other gear to allow it to operate 24 hours a day.
Tacloban, a city of 200,000, was shattered by Haiyan. The storm’s tremendous force brought a wall of water roaring off the Gulf of Leyte, leveling neighborhoods of wooden houses, flinging large ships ashore like toys.
“I have not spoken to anyone who has not lost someone, a relative close to them,” said Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez, who narrowly escaped death during the storm’s fury. “We are looking for as many as we can.”
Difficult to assess death toll
But Tacloban is far from the only devastated area. Authorities are trying to establish the level of destruction elsewhere along Haiyan’s path.
“It’s not just Tacloban; it’s all the coastal areas” in that region, said Gordon of the Red Cross.
Fishing communities stretch for miles down the eastern coast of Leyte, the island where Gen. Douglas Macarthur led U.S. troops ashore in 1944 at the start of the long, bloody fight to retake the Philippines from the Japanese during World War II.
The other settlements along the coast are likely to have suffered a similar fate to Tacloban’s.
Across the Gulf of Leyte lies Samar, where Haiyan made its first of six deadly landfalls on the Philippines on Friday. Government and aid officials say they are still trying to reach many affected communities on that island.
A similar challenge exists farther west, on the islands of Cebu and Panay, which also suffered direct hits from the typhoon.
The death toll, as reported by the Philippine Armed Forces Central Command, stood at 942 Monday night. But with so much about the storm’s impact still unknown, a full accounting of its victims will take time.
“We can give you estimates right now, but none of it will be accurate.” Gordon said.
U.S. Marines join relief efforts
As the United States, Pope Francis and Spain, among other nations, sent aid, Aquino declared a “state of national calamity,” which allows more latitude in rescue and recovery operations and gives the government power to set the prices of basic goods.
Authorities are funneling aid on military planes to Tacloban’s airport, which resumed limited commercial flights Monday. As aid workers, government officials and journalists came in, hundreds of residents waited in long lines hoping to get out.
The Marines who arrived Monday are the “forward edge” of a broader U.S. effort to aid the Philippines, Brig. Gen. Paul Kennedy said.
“We’re working hand in hand with the Philippines, both with their armed forces and the national police, and we will help them in their need,” he said.
The U.S. Agency for International Development was sending emergency shelter materials and basic hygiene supplies to aid 10,000 families as well as 55 metric tons of emergency rations sufficient to feed 20,000 children and 15,000 adults for up to five days.
Both shipments were expected to arrive this week, the agency said.
But with the airport 9 miles (15 kilometers) from the city center and many roads still clogged with debris, getting supplies to where they’re most needed is proving difficult.
‘They’ve lost everything’
The problems are the same in other stricken regions.
“Our priority is to address the urgent and immediate medical needs, of which we are sure there are many,” Reyes said. “After that, really it’s everything — shelter, water, food. They’ve lost everything.”
“The main challenges right now are related to logistics,” said Praveen Agrawal of the U.N.’s World Food Program, who returned to Manila from the affected areas Sunday. “Roads are blocked, airports are destroyed.”
The need for food and water has led to increasingly desperate efforts. People have broken into grocery and department stores in Tacloban.
Local businessman Richard Young said he and others had formed a group to protect their businesses.
“We have our firearms, we will shoot within our property,” he said.
Authorities have sent police and military reinforcements to try to bring the situation under control.
Another dire scene played out in the city’s only functioning hospital over the weekend. Doctors couldn’t admit any more wounded victims because there wasn’t enough room. Some injured lay in the hospital’s cramped hallways seeking treatment.
“We haven’t anything left to help people with,” one doctor said. “We have to get supplies in immediately.”
Complicating the search efforts is the lack of electricity in many parts of the storm’s path.
The northern part of Bogo, in the central Philippines, suffered a blackout Sunday, and authorities said it will take months to restore power.
Storm moves onto Vietnam
Meteorologists said it will take further analysis to confirm whether Haiyan — with gusts reported at first landfall to be up to 235 mph (375 kph) — set a record.
After leaving the Philippines, the storm lost power as it moved across the South China Sea over the weekend.
Early Monday, it hit the coast of northern Vietnam, where authorities had evacuated 800,000 people, according to the United Nations. It weakened to become a tropical storm as it moved inland.
Five people were reported dead, according to the state-run Vietnam News Agency.
Aid workers said Vietnam was likely to avoid damage on the scale suffered by the Philippines. But officials have warned the heavy rain brought by Haiyan could cause flooding and landslides in northern Vietnam and southern China.
For the devastated areas of the Philippines, the bad weather may not be over. The national weather agency, Pagasa, said Monday a tropical depression was moving toward the southern part of the country.
Far weaker than Haiyan, the weather system is likely to affect mainly the islands of Mindanao and Bohol, which didn’t suffer direct hits by the typhoon. But it could bring wind and heavy rain to Tacloban and the surrounding area, making conditions even more hazardous.
Aid workers said the recovery from Haiyan will take many months.
“This disaster on such a scale will probably have us working for the next year,” said Sandra Bulling, international communications officer for the aid agency CARE. “Fishermen have lost their boats. Crops are devastated. This is really the basic income of many people.”
Paula Hancocks and Ivan Watson reported from Tacloban; Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong. CNN’s Andrew Stevens, Kristie Lu Stout, Aliza Kassim, Kevin Wang, Jessica King, Pedram Javaheri, David Simpson and Yousuf Basil also contributed to this report.
Paula Hancocks, Ivan Watson and Jethro Mullen | CN
