- President declares state of national calamity
Dazed survivors begged for help and scavenged for food, water and medicine on Monday after a super typhoon killed an estimated 10,000 in the central Philippines. President Benigno Aquino declared a state of national calamity and deployed hundreds of soldiers in the coastal city of Tacloban to quell looting.
The huge scale of death and destruction from Friday's storm become clearer as reports emerged of thousands of people missing and images showed apocalyptic scenes in one town that has not been reached by rescue workers.
One of the most powerful storms ever recorded, typhoon Haiyan leveled Basey, a seaside town in Samar province about 10 km (6 miles) across a bay from Tacloban in Leyte province, where at least 10,000 people were killed, according to officials. About 2,000 people were missing in Basey, said the governor of Samar province.
"The situation is bad, the devastation has been significant. In some cases the devastation has been total," Secretary to the Cabinet Rene Almendras told a news conference. The United Nations said officials in Tacloban, which bore the brunt of the storm on Friday, had reported one mass grave of 300-500 bodies. More than 600,000 people were displaced by the storm across the country and some have no access to food, water, or medicine, the U.N. says.
Flattened by surging waves and monster winds up to 235 mph, Tacloban, 580 km (360 miles) southeast of Manila, was relying almost entirely for supplies and evacuation on just three military transport planes flying from nearby Cebu city.
Dozens of residents clamored for help at the airport gates. In a nationwide broadcast, Aquino said the government was focusing relief and assistance efforts on Samar and Leyte provinces, which acted as "funnels for the storm surges".
The declaration of a state of national calamity should quicken rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts. It will also allow the government to use state funds for relief and rehabilitation and control prices. Aquino said the government had set aside 18.7 billion pesos ($432.97 million) for rehabilitation. More bad weather was on the way with a depression due to bring rain to the central and southern Philippines on Tuesday, the weather bureau said.
Three days after the typhoon made landfall, residents of Tacloban told terrifying accounts of being swept away by a wall of water, revealing a city that had been hopelessly unprepared for a storm of Haiyan's almost unprecedented power. Most of the damage and deaths were caused by waves that inundated towns, washed ships ashore and swept away villages in scenes reminiscent of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.