Super Typhoon Haiyan - Aftermath....

[lordna]

My wifes family are all from Tacloban and Basey, Samar...so far no communication so we don't know if they survived. A very worrying time.

Seen lots of pictures from Tacloban and its been extremly badly hit with not many buildings left standing it seems.

[gWaPito]

My wifes family are all from Tacloban and Basey, Samar...so far no communication so we don't know if they survived. A very worrying time.

Seen lots of pictures from Tacloban and its been extremly badly hit with not many buildings left standing it seems.

So sorry to hear this lordna, your wife must be going through with worry...we can only pray and hope

[gWaPito]

Super Typhoon Haiyan: Thousands Feared Dead

Sky News – 2 hours 2 minutes ago

• View PhotoSuper Typhoon Haiyan: Thousands Feared Dead

Thousands of people are feared to have been killed in the areas of the Philippines hit by Super Typhoon Haiyan.

The country's Red Cross says it has been told there are 1,000 dead in Tacloban and 200 in Samar alone.
A Red Cross spokesman said: "We now fear that thousands will have lost their lives."
The scale of devastation led one UN disaster official to compare the destruction to that caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The official death toll had reached 138 by 1pm on Saturday (UK time) but there are fears the eventual death toll will be "massive" after the tropical cyclone smashed through the country with winds gusting up to 170mph.
And there are growing fears for Vietnam which is now in the path of what has been called one of the most powerful recorded cyclones in history.

Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, head of a United Nations disaster assessment coordination team, said: "This is destruction on a massive scale.

"The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami."
Around 220,000 people died as a result of that disaster.
Gwendolyn Pang, Philippine Red Cross secretary general said: "An estimated more than 1,000 bodies were seen floating in Tacloban. In Samar, about 200 deaths. Validation is ongoing."

When asked how many had died in just the coastal town of Palo and its surrounding area, Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla said: "I think hundreds. Palo, Ormoc, Burauen... Carigara, they all looked the same."

Scores of towns and villages are thought to have been inundated with water after storm surges flooded low-lying areas, drowning many in their path.
TV pictures showed cars, trees and rubble from houses strewn across streets after they were picked up by giant waves and carried inland.
"Almost all houses were destroyed, many are totally damaged. Only a few are left standing," said Major Rey Balido, a spokesman for the national disaster agency.
About a million people evacuated because they were living in the typhoon's path have been returning to find out what is left of their houses.

Many of those who died are thought to have left shelters in an urgent bid to rescue valuables from their homes, unaware of the giant waves flooding through coastal towns.
Hundreds of thousands are thought to have been left homeless.

British team of humanitarian experts is due to fly out to the Philippines to help the UK Government decide what aid to send.
An appeal launched by the British Red Cross has already raised more than £100,000. US Secretary of State John Kerry said that America stood "ready to help".

Many of the most heavily damaged areas are still to be contacted because power and telephone lines are down, making the work of providing relief all the more difficult.
Captain John Andrews, a Philippines aviation chief, said he had spoken to colleagues by radio who had told him there were "100-plus dead lying on the streets" in Tacloban.
Tacloban is the capital of Leyte, a large island of about two million people that suffered a direct hit from Haiyan on Friday morning when the storm was at its strongest.
Leyte Island, about 350 miles south of the capital Manila, is one of six islands that was in the path of the super typhoon's centre.
An increasing problem for the authorities now is looting, with many of the survivors desperate to get hold of supplies from the shattered shops.
Thousands of police and army personnel are being flown into the affected areas to start relief operations and to uphold law and order.
At one point the super typhoon had been stronger than it was when it hit land, with winds gusting up to 235mph making it among the most powerful ever.

Meteorologists said that it had slowed to 100mph after passing over the Philippines but is still expected to be of typhoon force as it sweeps across the South China Sea toward Vietnam.
Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese have been moved away from coastal areas as authorities prepared for Haiyan to make landfall around 10am Sunday. Millions are thought to be living in its path.

Source ;-

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/super-typho...6.html#INTtdek

[gWaPito]

Typhoon Haiyan: In hard-hit Tacloban, children ripped from arms

By Andrew Stevens and Paula Hancocks, CNN
November 9, 2013 -- Updated 2216 GMT (0616 HKT)

Fallen trees litter the ground at the Tacloban airport in the Philippines in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan on Saturday, November 9. The most powerful cyclone in three decades battered the Philippines, killing a number of people and leaving more than 100 bodies scattered on the streets of this coastal city. Haiyan, one of the most intense typhoons on record, plowed across the country on Friday, with monster winds tearing roofs off buildings and giant waves washing away homes.


STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• No building in the city of 200,000 appears to have survived intact
• No communications satellite phones
• A couple loses three of their daughters; two found dead
• Red Cross may charter a boat to reach area

Tacloban, Philippines (CNN) -- No building in this coastal city of 200,000 residents appears to have escaped damage from Super Typhoon Haiyan.
Roads were impassable Saturday; all communications except for satellite phones were down; medical supplies, food and water were scarce; and there were reports of looting.
And that was far from the worst of it.
People who had walked, sometimes for hours, to the relief station at the Tacloban airport told stories of the human cost.
Children torn from arms
Marvin Isanan said three of his daughters -- ages 8, 13 and 15 -- were swept from his arms by the storm surge. He and his wife, Loretta Isanan, had found the bodies of the two younger children.
"Only the eldest one is missing," Marvin Isanan said through tears. "I hope she's alive."
A woman at the airport said she escaped the water by climbing onto her roof. From there, she watched bodies float by.
Authorities have only estimates of the deaths. Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, estimated that 1,000 people died in Tacloban and an additional 200 on the nearby island of Samar.
The airport now houses a makeshift morgue. Further inland, a CNN crew found a small chapel being used to house nine covered bodies -- five of them children.
Eastern islands first to feel typhoon's force
Samar province and Tacloban, in Leyte province, are part of the Philippines' eastern islands.
U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur made his famous return to the Philippines near Tacloban in World War II, wading ashore from the Leyte Gulf in 1944. The Battle of Samar was part of the ensuing naval battle in the Leyte Gulf, which ended with Japanese naval forces crushed.
The geography made the area the first heavily populated area to feel the force of Haiyan on Friday.
Death toll likely exceeds 1,000
Utter devastation in Tacloban
Super typhoon death toll rises
People unable to reach loved ones
Water levels reached the second story
The million people who lived along the coast, many of them in rough-built shacks, may have been worst affected by what some said was a 5-foot storm surge that spread through the city of Tacloban at the height of the storm and with devastating speed.
It receded quickly, leaving a path marked by pieces of people's lives destroyed.
Relief effort no match for need
Interactive map of the storm
The Tacloban airport was not ready to accommodate the landing of planes carrying aid, though military helicopters began ferrying in supplies on Saturday. Trees and debris blocked roads to the airport, further delaying the relief operation.
How to help
Residents lined up at the airport for food. But the resources available were proving no match for the massive needs of the people, some of whom scoured piles of garbage in the streets for food, water or even missing loved ones.
People were wading through waist-high water amid a landscape littered with overturned vehicles, downed utility poles and trees, all of which were blocking the aid effort.
The Philippine Red Cross succeeded in getting its assessment team into Tacloban but had not managed to get its main team of aid workers and equipment to the city, Chairman Richard Gordon said.
"We really are having access problems," he said, adding that he was considering chartering a boat, which would take at least 1½ days to get there.
CNN's Andrew Stevens and Paula Hancocks reported this story from Tacloban; Tom Watkins and David Simpson wrote from Atlanta

Source:-
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/09/wo...ines-tacloban/