TACLOBAN: Hung outside a shattered church in the Philippine coastal city of Tacloban, on a road flanked with uncollected corpses and canyons of debris, is a handwritten sign.
It read, “We need help!” Relief supplies are pouring into Tacloban three days after Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, turned this once-vibrant port city of 220,000 into a corpse-choked wasteland.
At least a dozen US and Philippines military cargo planes arrived on Monday, with the Philippine air force saying it had flown in about 60,000 kg of relief supplies since Saturday. But the demand is huge and the supplies aren’t reaching those who need it most.
“People are roaming around the city, looking for food and water,” said Christopher Pedrosa, a government aid worker.
Aid trucks from the airport struggle to enter the city because of the stream of people and vehicles leaving it. On motorbikes, trucks or by foot, people clog the road to the airport, clutching scarves to their faces to blot out the dust and stench of bodies.
Hundreds have already left on cargo planes to the capital, Manila, or the second-biggest city of Cebu, with many more sleeping rough overnight at the wrecked airport in the hope of boarding flights in the coming days.
Earlier on Monday, said Pedrosa, soldiers fired warning shots into the air to stop people stealing fuel from a petrol station.
Officials attribute the high death toll to the many people who stayed behind to protect their property and were swept away in a storm surge of water and lacerating debris.
Haiyan struck with a force strong enough to drown hundreds of people in a storm surge and send cars and shipping containers tumbling through neighborhoods. All that’s left of the main airport building is a carcass of twisted metal.
Meanwhile, Guiuan, the storm-hit fishing town has been turned into a terrifying wasteland where armed men threaten to kill fellow survivors for food. “It is terrifying here,” a frightened resident told an AFP journalist as he stood amid the carnage of the town on the central island of Samar that a week ago was a bustling community of 47,000 people.
“There are armed thieves going about. If they know that you have food stored away, they will force their way into your house and rob you at gunpoint.” Other residents warned of pistol-wielding men seeking not money but rice — a valuable commodity as the town’s food supplies dwindle.
The roof of Guiuan’s church, which dates back to the 1700s, had been blown off, eliminating another slice of history for a town famed for being where Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in 1521.
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