Typhoon Haiyan

[Jollygoodfellow]

Honda in Bogo City Cebu

 

 

 

Getting some sleep on fallen wires

 

[Mike S]

Most likely blew in under the eaves. Any pictures of the damage in your area?

 

 

Thank you sir ..... thought of that too except the end wall goes up over the roof (see picture) ......

 

 

As you can see the walls go through the roof and there was no sign of water leaking down from the ceiling anywhere and being off white I'm sure it would show up and water spots on the ceiling plus paint blistering would occur I'm sure .... the ceiling in the bedroom is painted wood of some kind .... maybe pressed wood .... or hardboard ..... :hystery: :hystery:

:cheersty:

[Mike S]

Most likely blew in under the eaves. Any pictures of the damage in your area?

 

 

:cheersty:

JGF .... pictures of the Typhoon are a very sore subject around here right now .... my asawa took the video cam and shot some footage at different times of the storm but when we tried to play them back they were blank (and no the lens cap wasn't on ... only I do that .... :lol: ) .... she said it was my fault for not teaching her how to use the camera .... :hystery:  ... oh well a once in a life time opportunity (I hope) lost .... but all is forgiven now as I told her I would take her to Yellow Cab tomorrow for lunch .... :mocking:

Edited November 10, 2013 by Jollygoodfellow

[Medic Mike]

Philippine typhoon survivors 'walk like zombies' in search of help

 

Manuel Mogato, Reuters Nov 10, 2013

, Last Updated: 3:24 AM ET

 

TACLOBAN, Philippines - One of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, with huge waves sweeping away entire coastal villages and devastating the region's main city.

Super typhoon Haiyan destroyed about 70 to 80 percent of the area in its path as it tore through Leyte province on Friday, said police chief superintendent Elmer Soria.

As rescue workers struggled to reach ravaged villages along the coast, where the death toll is as yet unknown, survivors foraged for food as supplies dwindled or searched for lost loved ones.

"People are walking like zombies looking for food," said Jenny Chu, a medical student in Leyte. "It's like a movie."

Most of the deaths appear to have been caused by surging sea water strewn with debris that many said resembled a tsunami, levelling houses and drowning hundreds of people in one of the worst natural disasters to hit the typhoon-prone Southeast Asian nation.

The national government and disaster agency have not confirmed the latest estimate of deaths, a sharp increase from initial estimates on Saturday of at least 1,000 killed by a storm whose sustained winds reached 195 miles per hour (313 km per hour) with gusts of up to 235 mph (378 kph).

"We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said, based on their estimate, 10,000 died," Soria told Reuters. "The devastation is so big."

More than 330,900 people were displaced and 4.3 million "affected" by the typhoon in 36 provinces, the U.N.'s humanitarian agency said, as relief agencies called for food, water and tarpaulins for the homeless.

Witnesses and officials described chaotic scenes in Leyte's capital, Tacloban, a coastal city of 220,000 about 580 km (360 miles) southeast of Manila, with hundreds of bodies piled on the sides of roads and pinned under wrecked houses.

The city lies in a cove where the seawater narrows, making it susceptible to storm surges.

The city and nearby villages as far as one kilometre (just over half a mile) from shore were flooded, leaving floating bodies and roads choked with debris from fallen trees, tangled power lines and flattened homes. TV footage showed children clinging to rooftops for their lives.

Many Internet users urged prayers and called for aid for survivors in the largely Roman Catholic nation on social media sites such as Twitter.

"From a helicopter, you can see the extent of devastation. From the shore and moving a kilometre inland, there are no structures standing. It was like a tsunami," said Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas, who had been in Tacloban since before the typhoon struck the city.

"I don't know how to describe what I saw. It's horrific."

LOOTERS TAKE WHAT THEY CAN

Mila Ward, an Australian citizen and Filipino by birth who was in Leyte on vacation visiting her family, said she saw hundreds of bodies on the streets.

"They were covered with blankets, plastic. There were children and women," she said.

The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said aerial surveys showed "significant damage to coastal areas with heavy ships thrown to the shore, many houses destroyed and vast tracts of agricultural land decimated".

The destruction extended well beyond Tacloban. Officials had yet to make contact with Guiuan, a town of 40,000 that was first hit by the typhoon. Baco, a city of 35,000 people in Oriental Mindoro province, was 80 percent under water, the U.N. said.

There were reports of damage across much of the Visayas, a region of eight major islands, including Leyte, Cebu and Samar.

Many tourists were stranded. "Seawater reached the second floor of the hotel," said Nancy Chang, who was on a business trip from China in Tacloblan City and walked three hours through mud and debris for a military-led evacuation at the airport.

"It's like the end of the world."

Six people were killed and dozens wounded during heavy winds and storms in central Vietnam as Haiyan approached the coast, state media reported, even though it had weakened substantially since hitting the Philippines.

Vietnam authorities have moved 883,000 people in 11 central provinces to safe zones, according to the government's website. Despite weakening, the storm is likely to cause heavy rains, flooding, strong winds and mudslides as it makes its way north in the South China Sea.

Looters rampaged through several stores in Tacloban, witnesses said, taking whatever they could find as rescuers' efforts to deliver food and water were hampered by severed roads and communications.

Mobs attacked trucks loaded with food, tents and water on Tanauan bridge in Leyte, said Philippine Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon. "These are mobsters operating out of there."

Tecson John Lim, the Tacloban city administrator, said city officials had so far only collected 300-400 bodies, but believed the death toll in the city alone could be 10,000.

International aid agencies said relief efforts in the Philippines were stretched thin after a 7.2 magnitude quake in central Bohol province last month and displacement caused by a conflict with Muslim rebels in southern Zamboanga province.

The World Food Programme said it was airlifting 40 tonnes of high-energy biscuits, enough to feed 120,000 people for a day, as well as emergency supplies and telecommunications equipment.

Tacloban city airport was all but destroyed as seawaters swept through the city, shattering the glass of the airport tower, levelling the terminal and overturning nearby vehicles.

A Reuters reporter saw five bodies inside a chapel near the airport, placed on pews. Airport manager Efren Nagrama, 47, said water levels rose up to four metres (13 feet).

"It was like a tsunami. We escaped through the windows and I held on to a pole for about an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the airport," he said. "Some of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I prayed hard all throughout until the water subsided."

 

Edited November 10, 2013 by Medic Mike

[Medic Mike]

World Vision responding to massive destruction by Super Typhoon Haiyan

 

Typhoon Haiyan uprooted trees in Bohol where families are still recovering from the damages brought by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Central Visayas. Romero Marino for World Vision

Typhoon Haiyan swept through the Philippines cutting a path of destruction in its wake, World Vision is joining with the government in rapid assessment and response teams.

Police in the Philippines are saying that there could be as many as 10,000 deaths from the super typhoon. The number of people left homeless by the storm could run into the hundreds of thousands.

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Typhoon Haiyan, considered one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded, made landfall in the Philippines early on November 8, sweeping the central Visayas island group. With maximum sustained winds of 315 kph (195 mph), the typhoon lashed Eastern Samar, Leyte, the Panay Islands, Cebu and the quake-stricken Bohol.

“The impact has been tremendous. It’s reported to be the biggest typhoon of the year, and it is,” said Gjeff Lamigo, World Vision communications manager in Manila. 

Images of houses damaged, large trees uprooted, and swelling waves caused by storm surges towering as high as 16 feet have occupiedinternational and local headlines.

An estimated 25 million people are affected in Visayas and Luzon alone. Many have been displaced, especially in Bohol, where about 5,000 families remain temporarily sheltered in make-shift tents following the recent quake.

Photo courtesy Reuters

Quake-affected families at the mercy of the storm

Food, clean water, and emergency shelter are the greatest needs at more than 100 evacuation centres. 

“Families are displaced and living in cramped conditions tonight (Friday),” says Aaron Aspi, a World Vision emergency communications specialist.  

“Here in Bohol, the area hardest hit during the quake last month, people are still afraid to go inside buildings. Despite urging by the government to go into evacuation centres, they are staying outside in makeshift structures and tents.”

“They are exposed to extreme weather, which can lead to coughing, colds, and respiratory infections.”

Extent of damage and loss still unknown

Massive communication and power outages across the provinces have made it difficult to determine the full extent of the typhoon’s damage. Among the areas affected are locations of 18 long-term community development programs where World Vision assists 34,460 registered children. 

“We’re still trying to reach our colleagues in eastern Visayas where the typhoon made landfall. But it’s been a challenge for the past 12 hours. There’s been a total breakdown in communications. In fact, we haven’t heard from some of our colleagues since this morning; it’s a total communications black hole,” Lamigo said. 

View BBC News photos

“Because of this [communications breakdown] it’s a bit slow to get a full understanding of the extent of the damage. We’re hoping for the best, but we have yet to find out.”

MASSIVE RESPONSE BEGINS

World Vision is mustering resources to assist 1.2 million people (240,000 families) with food, non-food items, hygiene kits, emergency shelter, and protection, especially for children and women.

The Philippines World Vision office has committed its total effort for the next three weeks to carry out its largest emergency response to date. 

National Director Josaias dela Cruz appeals, “Please continue to uphold in prayer our responding staff and the suffering people in the Visayas and other typhoon-stricken areas. Now is the time to join our hearts, extend our helping hands, and work together to rebuild and uplift our fellow peoples’ lives.”

 

Edited November 10, 2013 by Medic Mike

[Medic Mike]

^{Classes remain suspended in typhoon-hit Cebu areas}

 

^{Sunday, November 10, 2013}

^{CLASSES in elementary and secondary levels in some municipalities in Cebu province will remain suspended from November 11 to 15 to give time to repair classrooms damaged by Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan).}

^{The Department of Education announced on its Facebook account that classes are suspended in the following areas:}

<sup>- Sogod
- Borbon
- Tabogon
- San Remigio
- Medellin
- Daan-bantayan
- Madrilejos
- Santa Fe
- Bantayan</sup>

^{Super Typhoon Yolanda barreled through six central Philippine islands on Friday, wiping away buildings and leveling seaside homes with ferocious winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour) and gusts of 275 kph (170 mph).}

^{Mayors in Cebu’s northernmost towns reported 14 killed by the typhoon, which flattened their crops, damaged nearly all of their constituents’ houses and cut off power and phone services for two days now.}

^{The death toll is expected to rise beyond the government’s list of 138 dead as of Saturday night.}

^{In Bantayan, Cebu, where Yolanda made its fourth landfall at 10:40 a.m. last Friday, Mayor Ian Escario said it would take two to three months for them to recover.}

^{Meanwhile, Daanbantayan Mayor Augusto Corro said they will use P5 million, which is 70 percent of their calamity fund. But they will need financial assistance from the Provincial Government and relief goods from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)-Central Visayas to be distributed to displaced families.}

^{In Sogod town, Mayor Lisa Marie Durano-Estreegan said many of her constituents, mostly farmers, lost their means of livelihood.}

^{Durano-Estreegan said they will give financial assistance to the families who lost their homes. Private organizations such as Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. and World Vision have pledged to give support.}

^{In the towns of Carmen, Catmon and Danao, the police said no one was reported killed or injured. (AP/Sunnex)}

 

Edited November 10, 2013 by Medic Mike

[Medic Mike]

Survivors "walk like zombies" after Philippine typhoon kills estimated 10,000

 

* "People are walking like zombies, looking for food"

* Looters rampage through several stores "taking everything"

* Ravaged villages, where the death toll is unknown, yet to be reached (Adds details of damage in other provinces, quotes)

By Manuel Mogato

TACLOBAN, Philippines, Nov 10 (Reuters) - One of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, with huge waves sweeping away entire coastal villages and devastating the region's main city.

Super typhoon Haiyan destroyed about 70 to 80 percent of the area in its path as it tore through Leyte province on Friday, said police chief superintendent Elmer Soria.

As rescue workers struggled to reach ravaged villages along the coast, where the death toll is as yet unknown, survivors foraged for food as supplies dwindled or searched for lost loved ones.

"People are walking like zombies looking for food," said Jenny Chu, a medical student in Leyte. "It's like a movie."

Most of the deaths appear to have been caused by surging sea water strewn with debris that many said resembled a tsunami, levelling houses and drowning hundreds of people in one of the worst natural disasters to hit the typhoon-prone Southeast Asian nation.

The national government and disaster agency have not confirmed the latest estimate of deaths, a sharp increase from initial estimates on Saturday of at least 1,000 killed by a storm whose sustained winds reached 195 miles per hour (313 km per hour) with gusts of up to 235 mph (378 kph).

"We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said, based on their estimate, 10,000 died," Soria told Reuters. "The devastation is so big."

More than 330,900 people were displaced and 4.3 million "affected" by the typhoon in 36 provinces, the U.N.'s humanitarian agency said, as relief agencies called for food, water and tarpaulins for the homeless.

Witnesses and officials described chaotic scenes in Leyte's capital, Tacloban, a coastal city of 220,000 about 580 km (360 miles) southeast of Manila, with hundreds of bodies piled on the sides of roads and pinned under wrecked houses.

The city lies in a cove where the seawater narrows, making it susceptible to storm surges.

The city and nearby villages as far as one kilometre (just over half a mile) from shore were flooded, leaving floating bodies and roads choked with debris from fallen trees, tangled power lines and flattened homes. TV footage showed children clinging to rooftops for their lives.

Many Internet users urged prayers and called for aid for survivors in the largely Roman Catholic nation on social media sites such as Twitter.

"From a helicopter, you can see the extent of devastation. From the shore and moving a kilometre inland, there are no structures standing. It was like a tsunami," said Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas, who had been in Tacloban since before the typhoon struck the city.

"I don't know how to describe what I saw. It's horrific."

 

LOOTERS TAKE WHAT THEY CAN

Mila Ward, an Australian citizen and Filipino by birth who was in Leyte on vacation visiting her family, said she saw hundreds of bodies on the streets.

"They were covered with blankets, plastic. There were children and women," she said.

The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said aerial surveys showed "significant damage to coastal areas with heavy ships thrown to the shore, many houses destroyed and vast tracts of agricultural land decimated".

The destruction extended well beyond Tacloban. Officials had yet to make contact with Guiuan, a town of 40,000 that was first hit by the typhoon. Baco, a city of 35,000 people in Oriental Mindoro province, was 80 percent under water, the U.N. said.

There were reports of damage across much of the Visayas, a region of eight major islands, including Leyte, Cebu and Samar.

Many tourists were stranded. "Seawater reached the second floor of the hotel," said Nancy Chang, who was on a business trip from China in Tacloblan City and walked three hours through mud and debris for a military-led evacuation at the airport.

"It's like the end of the world."

Six people were killed and dozens wounded during heavy winds and storms in central Vietnam as Haiyan approached the coast, state media reported, even though it had weakened substantially since hitting the Philippines.

Vietnam authorities have moved 883,000 people in 11 central provinces to safe zones, according to the government's website. Despite weakening, the storm is likely to cause heavy rains, flooding, strong winds and mudslides as it makes its way north in the South China Sea.

Looters rampaged through several stores in Tacloban, witnesses said, taking whatever they could find as rescuers' efforts to deliver food and water were hampered by severed roads and communications.

Mobs attacked trucks loaded with food, tents and water on Tanauan bridge in Leyte, said Philippine Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon. "These are mobsters operating out of there."

Tecson John Lim, the Tacloban city administrator, said city officials had so far only collected 300-400 bodies, but believed the death toll in the city alone could be 10,000.

International aid agencies said relief efforts in the Philippines were stretched thin after a 7.2 magnitude quake in central Bohol province last month and displacement caused by a conflict with Muslim rebels in southern Zamboanga province.

The World Food Programme said it was airlifting 40 tonnes of high-energy biscuits, enough to feed 120,000 people for a day, as well as emergency supplies and telecommunications equipment.

Tacloban city airport was all but destroyed as seawaters swept through the city, shattering the glass of the airport tower, levelling the terminal and overturning nearby vehicles.

A Reuters reporter saw five bodies inside a chapel near the airport, placed on pews. Airport manager Efren Nagrama, 47, said water levels rose up to four metres (13 feet).

"It was like a tsunami. We escaped through the windows and I held on to a pole for about an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the airport," he said. "Some of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I prayed hard all throughout until the water subsided." (Additional reporting by Rosemarie Francisco; Editing by Jason Szep and Nick Macfie)

Edited November 10, 2013 by Medic Mike

[Medic Mike]

Sky News in Australia is reporting 1 Australian dead in Leyte.

[Medic Mike]

Philippine typhoon kills estimated 10,000

 

One of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, with huge waves sweeping away entire coastal villages and devastating the region's main city.

Super typhoon Haiyan destroyed about 70 to 80 percent of the area in its path as it tore through Leyte province on Friday, said police chief superintendent Elmer Soria. As rescue workers struggled to reach ravaged villages along the coast, where the death toll is as yet unknown, survivors foraged for food as supplies dwindled or searched for lost loved ones. "People are walking like zombies looking for food," said Jenny Chu, a medical student in Leyte. "It's like a movie."

Most of the deaths appear to have been caused by surging sea water strewn with debris that many said resembled a tsunami, levelling houses and drowning hundreds of people in one of the worst natural disasters to hit the typhoon-prone Southeast Asian nation. The national government and disaster agency have not confirmed the latest estimate of deaths, a sharp increase from initial estimates on Saturday of at least 1,000 killed by a storm whose sustained winds reached 195 miles per hour (313 km per hour) with gusts of up to 235 mph.

"We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said, based on their estimate, 10,000 died," Soria told Reuters. "The devastation is so big." More than 330,900 people were displaced and 4.3 million "affected" by the typhoon in 36 provinces, the U.N.'s humanitarian agency said, as relief agencies called for food, water and tarpaulins for the homeless.

Witnesses and officials described chaotic scenes in Leyte's capital, Tacloban, a coastal city of 220,000 about 580 km (360 miles) southeast of Manila, with hundreds of bodies piled on the sides of roads and pinned under wrecked houses. The city lies in a cove where the seawater narrows, making it susceptible to storm surges.

The city and nearby villages as far as one kilometer (just over half a mile) from shore were flooded, leaving floating bodies and roads choked with debris from fallen trees, tangled power lines and flattened homes. TV footage showed children clinging to rooftops for their lives. Many Internet users urged prayers and called for aid for survivors in the largely Roman Catholic nation on social media sites such as Twitter.

"From a helicopter, you can see the extent of devastation. From the shore and moving a kilometer inland, there are no structures standing. It was like a tsunami," said Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas, who had been in Tacloban since before the typhoon struck the city.

"I don't know how to describe what I saw. It's horrific." Mila Ward, an Australian citizen and Filipino by birth who was in Leyte on vacation visiting her family, said she saw hundreds of bodies on the streets. "They were covered with blankets, plastic. There were children and women," she said.

The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said aerial surveys showed "significant damage to coastal areas with heavy ships thrown to the shore, many houses destroyed and vast tracts of agricultural land decimated".

The destruction extended well beyond Tacloban. Officials had yet to make contact with Guiuan, a town of 40,000 that was first hit by the typhoon. Baco, a city of 35,000 people in Oriental Mindoro province, was 80 percent under water, the U.N. said.

There were reports of damage across much of the Visayas, a region of eight major islands, including Leyte, Cebu and Samar.

Many tourists were stranded. "Seawater reached the second floor of the hotel," said Nancy Chang, who was on a business trip from China in Tacloblan City and walked three hours through mud and debris for a military-led evacuation at the airport.

Six people were killed and dozens wounded during heavy winds and storms in central Vietnam as Haiyan approached the coast, state media reported, even though it had weakened substantially since hitting the Philippines.

Vietnam authorities have moved 883,000 people in 11 central provinces to safe zones, according to the government's website. Despite weakening, the storm is likely to cause heavy rains, flooding, strong winds and mudslides as it makes its way north in the South China Sea.

Looters rampaged through several stores in Tacloban, witnesses said, taking whatever they could find as rescuers' efforts to deliver food and water were hampered by severed roads and communications.

Mobs attacked trucks loaded with food, tents and water on Tanauan Bridge in Leyte, said Philippine Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon. "These are mobsters operating out of there."

Tecson John Lim, the Tacloban city administrator, said city officials had so far only collected 300-400 bodies, but believed the death toll in the city alone could be 10,000.

International aid agencies said relief efforts in the Philippines were stretched thin after a 7.2 magnitude quake in central Bohol province last month and displacement caused by a conflict with Muslim rebels in southern Zamboanga province. The World Food Programme said it was airlifting 40 tons of high-energy biscuits, enough to feed 120,000 people for a day, as well as emergency supplies and telecommunications equipment.

Tacloban city airport was all but destroyed as seawaters swept through the city, shattering the glass of the airport tower, levelling the terminal and overturning nearby vehicles. A Reuters reporter saw five bodies inside a chapel near the airport, placed on pews. Airport manager Efren Nagrama, 47, said water levels rose up to four meters (13 feet).

"It was like a tsunami. We escaped through the windows and I held on to a pole for about an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the airport," he said. "Some of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I prayed hard all throughout until the water subsided."

 

Edited November 10, 2013 by Medic Mike

[Medic Mike]

Philippine typhoon deaths climb into thousands

 

By JIM GOMEZ
Associated Press

TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) - As many as 10,000 people are believed dead in one Philippine city alone after one of the worst storms ever recorded unleashed ferocious winds and giant waves that washed away homes and schools. Corpses hung from tree branches and were scattered along sidewalks and among flattened buildings, while looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water.

Officials projected the death toll could climb even higher when emergency crews reach areas cut off by flooding and landslides. Even in the disaster-prone Philippines, which regularly contends with earthquakes, volcanoes and tropical cyclones, Typhoon Haiyan appears to be the deadliest natural disaster on record.

Haiyan hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippine archipelago on Friday and quickly barreled across its central islands before exiting into the South China Sea, packing winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour) that gusted to 275 kph (170 mph), and a storm surge that caused sea waters to rise 6 meters (20 feet).

It wasn't until Sunday that the scale of the devastation became clear, with local officials on hardest-hit Leyte Island saying that there may be 10,000 dead in the provincial capital of Tacloban alone. Reports also trickled in from elsewhere on the island, and from neighboring islands, indicating hundreds, if not thousands more deaths, though it will be days before the full extent of the storm's impact can be assessed.

"On the way to the airport we saw many bodies along the street," said Philippine-born Australian Mila Ward, 53, who was waiting at the Tacloban airport to catch a military flight back to Manila. "They were covered with just anything - tarpaulin, roofing sheets, cardboards." She said she passed "well over 100" dead bodies along the way.

In the storm's aftermath, people wept while retrieving the bodies of loved ones from inside buildings. On a street littered with fallen trees, roofing material and other wreckage, all that was left of one large building were the skeletal remains of its rafters.

The airport in Tacloban, about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Manila, was a muddy wasteland of debris, with crumpled tin roofs and overturned cars. The airport tower's glass windows were shattered, and air force helicopters were flying in and out as relief operations got underway. Residential homes lining the road into Tacloban city were all blown or washed away.

"All systems, all vestiges of modern living - communications, power, water - all are down," Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said after visiting Tacloban on Saturday. "There is no way to communicate with the people."

Haiyan raced across the eastern and central Philippines, inflicting serious damage to at least six of the archipelago's more than 7,000 islands, with Leyte, neighboring Samar Island, and the northern part of Cebu appearing to take the hardest hit. It weakened as it crossed the South China Sea before approaching northern Vietnam. It was forecast to hit land Monday morning.

On Leyte, regional police chief Elmer Soria said the provincial governor had told him there were about 10,000 deaths there, primarily from drowning and collapsed buildings. Most of the deaths were in Tacloban, a city of about 200,000 that is the biggest on Leyte Island. A mass burial was planned for Sunday in a nearby town.

On Samar, Leo Dacaynos of the provincial disaster office said 300 people were confirmed dead in one town and another 2,000 were missing, while some towns have yet to be reached by rescuers. He pleaded for food and water and said power was out and there was no cellphone signal, making communication possible only by radio.

Reports from the other affected islands indicated dozens, perhaps hundreds more deaths.

The massive casualties occurred even though the government had evacuated nearly 800,000 people ahead of the typhoon. About 4 million people were affected by the storm, the national disaster agency said.

President Benigno Aquino III flew around Leyte by helicopter on Sunday and landed in Tacloban to get a firsthand look at the disaster. He said the government's priority was to restore power and communications in isolated areas and deliver relief and medical assistance to victims.

Challenged to respond to a disaster of such magnitude, the Philippine government also accepted help from its U.S. and European allies.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel directed the military's Pacific Command to deploy ships and aircraft to support search-and-rescue operations and airlift emergency supplies, while European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso sent Aquino a message saying "we stand ready to contribute with urgent relief and assistance if so required in this hour of need."

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered his condolences and said U.N. humanitarian agencies were working closely with the Philippine government to respond quickly with emergency assistance, according to a statement.

The Philippines is annually buffeted by tropical storms and typhoons, which are called hurricanes and cyclones elsewhere on the planet. The nation is positioned alongside the warm South Pacific where typhoons are spawned. Many rake the islands with fierce winds and powerful waves each year, and the archipelago's exposed eastern seaboard often bears the brunt.

Even by the standards of the Philippines, however, Haiyan is a catastrophe of epic proportions and has shocked the impoverished and densely populated nation of 96 million people. Its winds were among the strongest ever recorded, and it appears to have killed many more people than the previous deadliest Philippine storm, Thelma, which killed around 5,100 people in the central Philippines in 1991.The 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.

Haiyan's winds were so strong that Tacloban residents who sought shelter at a local school tied down the building's roof, but it was ripped off anyway and the school collapsed, City Administrator Tecson Lim said. It wasn't clear how many died there.

The city's two largest malls and groceries were looted and the gasoline stations destroyed by the typhoon. Police were deployed to guard a fuel depot to prevent the theft of fuel. Two hundred additional police officers came to Tacloban on Sunday from elsewhere in the country to help restore law and order.

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said Aquino was "speechless" when he told him of the devastation the typhoon had wrought in Tacloban.

"I told him all systems are down," Gazmin said. "There is no power, no water, nothing. People are desperate. They're looting."

Tacloban, in the east-central Philippines, is near the Red Beach on Leyte Island where U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur waded ashore in 1944 during the Second World War and fulfilled his famous pledge: "I shall return."

It was the first city liberated from the Japanese by U.S. and Filipino forces and served as the Philippines' temporary capital for several months. It is also the hometown of former Filipino first lady Imelda Marcos, whose nephew, Alfred Romualdez, is the city's mayor.

One Tacloban resident said he and others took refuge inside a parked Jeep to protect themselves from the storm, but the vehicle was swept away by a surging wall of water.

"The water was as high as a coconut tree," said 44-year-old Sandy Torotoro, a bicycle taxi driver who lives near the airport with his wife and 8-year-old daughter. "I got out of the Jeep and I was swept away by the rampaging water with logs, trees and our house, which was ripped off from its mooring.

"When we were being swept by the water, many people were floating and raising their hands and yelling for help. But what can we do? We also needed to be helped," Torotoro said.

In Torotoro's village, bodies could be seen lying along the muddy main road, as residents who had lost their homes huddled with the few possessions they had managed to save. The road was lined with trees that had fallen to the ground.

Vice Mayor Jim Pe of Coron town on Busuanga, the last island battered by the typhoon before it blew away to the South China Sea, said most of the houses and buildings there had been destroyed or damaged. Five people drowned in the storm surge and three others were missing, he said by phone.

The sound of the wind "was like a 747 flying just above my roof," he said. His family and some of his neighbors whose houses were destroyed took shelter in his basement.

Tim Ticar, a local tourism officer, said 6,000 foreign and local tourists were stranded on the popular resort island of Boracay, one of the tourist spots in the typhoon's path.

UNICEF estimated that about 1.7 million children are living in areas impacted by the typhoon, according to the agency's representative in the Philippines Tomoo Hozumi. UNICEF's supply division in Copenhagen was loading 60 metric tons of relief supplies for an emergency airlift expected to arrive in the Philippines on Tuesday.

"The devastation is ... I don't have the words for it," Interior Secretary Roxas said. "It's really horrific. It's a great human tragedy."

 

Edited November 10, 2013 by Medic Mike