[Typhoon Haiyan, among
the most powerful in history, slammed into the eastern Philippine city of
Tacloban on Friday and cut a path of devastation barreling west across the
archipelago nation. In its wake, corpses lay along roads lined with splintered
homes and toppled power lines, as the living struggled to survive, increasingly
desperate for fresh drinking water, food and shelter. The damage to everything
is so great that it is hard even to tally. Mass graves began to fill as relief
efforts struggled to get underway.]
TACLOBAN, the Philippines — Decomposing bodies still lie along the roads, like a corpse in a
pink, short-sleeve shirt and blue shorts facedown in a black, muddy puddle 100
yards from the airport. Just down the road is a church that was supposed to be
an evacuation center but is littered with the bodies of those who drowned
inside.
When a wind-whipped
ocean rose Friday night, the ground floors of homes hundreds of yards inland
were submerged within minutes, trapping residents like Virginia Basinang, a
54-year-old retired teacher, who suddenly found herself struggling in
waist-deep water on the second floor of her home. Screaming people bobbed in
the water that surged through the streets, many grabbing for floating debris.
“Some of them were able
to hold on, some were lucky and lived, but most did not,” she said, adding that
14 bodies were left on a wall across the street when the seawater receded a
half-hour later. The bodies are still there, and the odor of their decay makes
it impossible for Ms. Basinang and her family to eat meals at home.
Typhoon Haiyan, among
the most powerful in history, slammed into the eastern Philippine city of
Tacloban on Friday and cut a path of devastation barreling west across the
archipelago nation. In its wake, corpses lay along roads lined with splintered
homes and toppled power lines, as the living struggled to survive, increasingly
desperate for fresh drinking water, food and shelter. The damage to everything
is so great that it is hard even to tally. Mass graves began to fill as relief
efforts struggled to get underway.
The roads of this
once-thriving city of 220,000 were so clogged with debris from nearby buildings
that they were barely discernible. The civilian airport terminal has shattered
walls and gaping holes in the roof where steel beams protrude, twisted and torn
by winds far more powerful than those of Hurricane Katrina when it made
landfall near New Orleans in 2005.
One of the saddest and
deadliest moments came when hundreds of people flocked to Tacloban’s domed
sports arena at the urging of municipal officials, who believed its sturdy roof
would withstand the wind. The roof did, but the arena flooded, and many inside
drowned or were trampled in a frenzied rush to higher seats.
The top civil defense
official of the Philippines said in an interview after inspecting the damage
that the storm surge had been the highest in the country’s modern history.
Nothing like this had ever happened, perhaps explaining why so few thought they
needed to flee inland and instead went to evacuation centers near the coast.
The sea level rose 10 to 13 feet and filled streets and homes deep in the city,
propelled by sustained winds of at least 140 miles per hour and gusts that were
much stronger.
“It was a tsunami-like
storm surge; it is the first time,” said Eduardo del Rosario, the executive
director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.
Tacloban has been hit by typhoons for decades, but never had the sea risen high
enough to pour over the swath of low salt marshes and inundate the city’s shady
streets, he said.
As a violet sunset
melted on Monday evening into the nearly total darkness of a city without
electricity, lighted only by a waxing half-moon, some dispirited residents
walked home. Others lay down in the ruins of the airport terminal after another
day of waiting in hope of fresh water, food or a flight out. Grocery stores and
pharmacies across the city were sacked over the weekend, leaving bare shelves
for a population quickly growing hungry and thirsty.
A coast guardsman said
that he had helped fill a mass grave in the nearby village of Hernani. “I
personally threw in one body earlier, and it was a relative of my friend in
Manila — I haven’t told her yet because I can’t get a signal” for cellphone
usage, said the coast guardsman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. The same friend in
Manila has lost her grandfather, whom the coast guardsman threw in the mass
grave, as well as her aunt and two cousins, the guardsman added, saying that
other relatives who survived the typhoon had confirmed the identities of the
dead.
This regional capital
was among the hardest hit in a nation accustomed to misery blown in from the
sea. But this storm was like nothing before it, and its devastation was not yet
fully understood. Villages along the coasts may have been wiped out, and the
toll — at least 10,000 in Tacloban alone are feared dead — was just an
estimate. Relief efforts were complicated by a persistent and heavy rain.
Miriam Refugio, 60,
waited in the crowd of Filipinos at the airport seeking a scarce place on a
flight to Manila. “Our home was destroyed, there is no food in this town, so we
have to flee,” she said, standing with her teenage granddaughter, who held
their only drinking water, a nearly empty plastic bottle that could hold
perhaps two cups.
They were trying to
decide whether to drink water from a nearby pump even though the granddaughter,
tugging at her stomach for emphasis, said that they were certain to become sick
if they did.
Mr. del Rosario of the
National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said the government was
still sending out helicopters on Monday to look for communities that had not
been heard from since the typhoon. The government had confirmed 1,563 deaths
through Sunday evening in the hardest-hit region of the east-central
Philippines, and the death toll would “most likely” rise, he said.
But one of the biggest
questions here involves the many people who seem to have disappeared, possibly
sucked out to sea when the ocean returned to its usual level.
Rosemary Balais, 39,
said a very large proportion, possibly more than half, of the 5,000 people in
her hometown, Tanauan, near Tacloban, seemed to be missing. “My sister and
their children were there, and we have not heard from them since last
Thursday,” she said, adding that they had lived only around 300 yards inland.
“There was a neighbor
who had won a lottery and had a big house, and even that house was flattened,”
she said.
Compounding the damage
was the extraordinary force of the wind. Palm trees are naturally resilient,
flexing and bending in high winds. But entire groves were flattened and their
trunks left in tangles on the ground as though giant boxes of toothpicks had
been tipped over.
In a country cursed by a
succession of natural disasters, from earthquakes to violent storms to volcanic
eruptions, the typhoon was especially deadly and destructive. “It’s going to be
classified as one of the worst, if not the worst, in decades,” among disasters
that have struck the Philippines, said Ricky Carandang, a presidential
spokesman.
The local government has
declared a state of emergency and a curfew in Tacloban, and the national
government was considering an emergency declaration in the city as well to
speed the release of government money, Mr. Carandang said. The government was
trying to fly in military and civilian police officers to restore law and
order, but progress was slow. Hundreds of soldiers and dozens of relief workers
milled around the Cebu airport throughout the morning, waiting for a plane to
carry them to Tacloban.
Richard Gordon, chairman
of the Philippines Red Cross, said Monday morning that more flights would be
needed to bring in relief supplies. A Red Cross convoy headed here on Sunday
turned back when it stopped at a collapsed bridge and was nearly hijacked by a
hungry crowd, he said, calling for a more visible police and military presence.
Some of the people
searching here for lost relatives were sobbing softly. One was April Escoto,
28, from Tacloban, who went on vacation to Cebu with her 24-year-old sister two
days before the typhoon hit. Ms. Escoto left her sister in Cebu after they
concluded that the lawless streets of Tacloban were too dangerous for them to
risk what might be the two last members of their family.
“Since the storm hit,”
she said, “we have not heard anything from our family.”
