TACLOBAN, Philippines - A US aircraft carrier "strike group" started unloading food and water to the typhoon-ravaged central Philippines on Thursday, as President Benigno Aquino III faced mounting pressure to speed up the distribution of supplies.
While relief efforts picked up, local authorities began burying the dead - an important, if grim, milestone for a city shredded by one of the world's most powerful typhoons and the tsunami-like wall of seawater believed to have killed thousands.
Many petrol station owners whose businesses were spared have refused to reopen, leaving little fuel for trucks needed to move supplies and medical teams around the devastated areas nearly a week after Super Typhoon Yolanda (international code name: Haiyan) struck.
"I cannot use a truck to collect cadavers in the morning and then use it to distribute relief goods in the afternoon," said Alfred Romualdez, mayor of Tacloban, a city of 220,000 people reduced to rubble in worst-hit Leyte province.
"The choice is to use the same truck either to distribute food or collect bodies."
The Philippine coastguard on Thursday confirmed the death of a 69-year-old Dutch tourist, whose body was found on Monday near the western Philippine island of Palawan.
The nuclear-powered USS George Washington aircraft carrier and accompanying ships arrived off wind-swept eastern Samar province, carrying 5,000 crew and more than 80 aircraft, after what strike force commander Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery called a "high-speed transit" from Hong Kong.
It is moored near where US General Douglas MacArthur's force of 174,000 men landed on October 20, 1944, in one of the biggest allied victories of World War Two.
"Operation Damayan" started with the George Washington and two cruisers taking up position off Samar to assess damage and provide logistical and emergency support such as fresh water.
Ships carried 11 pallets ashore - eight containing 1,920 gallons of water and three containing food - at Tacloban airfield. Several pallets of water were taken to Guiuan, Eastern Samar, home to 45,000 people, which was also badly hit by the storm when it made its first landfall there.
The carrier moved some fixed-wing aircraft ashore to make more room for the helicopters on the flight deck.
"One of the best capabilities the strike group brings is our 21 helicopters," Montgomery said in a statement. "These helicopters represent a good deal of lift to move emergency supplies around."
US President Barack Obama urged Americans to donate generously to their former Asian colony.
Relief channels slowly opening up
US officials said relief channels were slowly opening up with the reopening of a main road.
Ships and planes from Asia-Pacific nations and Europe are also converging on the Philippines, bearing food, water, medical supplies, tents and other essentials to a population in dire need of the basics of life.
Britain also said it would send a helicopter carrier, HMS Illustrious, to help in the relief effort.
Prime Minister David Cameron dispatched the biggest vessel in Britain's own fleet while heavy transport planes carrying equipment such as forklift trucks have already arrived.
The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), a coordinating body for British aid charities, said it had raised 23 million pounds ($37 million) in the first 48 hours of launching an appeal for the Philippines.
"The public's reaction to the sheer devastation that has been left by Typhoon Haiyan is quite simply remarkable. We are so grateful for the huge amount of donations which are vital to fund the work done by our emergency teams," DEC chief executive Saleh Saeed said.
Japan was also planning to send up to 1,000 troops as well as naval vessels and aircraft, in what could be Tokyo's biggest postwar military deployment.
But on the ground, the meager aid that was getting through was still inadequate, with distribution hampered by fears of armed looters and by broken infrastructure.
Sick or injured people lie helplessly among the ruins of buildings, while those with the energy try to leave a place that resembles hell.
Efren Nagrama, area manager at the civil aviation authority, said conditions were "very dire now" as he surveyed the filthy stream of humanity at Tacloban's battered airport clamoring to get a flight out.
"You see hundreds coming to the compound every day. People who have walked for days without eating, only to arrive here and be made to wait for hours or days under the elements," he said.
"People are pushed to the tipping point -- they see relief planes but cannot get to the food nor get a ride out. There is chaos."
Mass burials
Almost a week after Haiyan swept through the country's central islands, desperation was still apparent and many of the dead remained unburied.
Outside Taclaban, burials began for about 300 bodies in a mass grave on Thursday. A larger grave will be dug for 1,000, city administrator Tecson John Lim told Reuters.
Around 110 corpses were interred in a mass grave Thursday before heavy-digging machinery broke down, said Mayor Romualdez.
They were placed at the bottom of a huge pit that is expected to be several layers deep by the time it is covered over with earth.
"There are still so many cadavers in so many areas. It's scary," Romualdez said, adding that retrieval teams were struggling to cope.
"There would be a request from one community to collect five or 10 bodies and when we get there, there are 40," he said, describing aid agencies' response to the crisis as too slow.
Romualdez said the people of Tacloban needed an "overwhelming response" from aid organizations and the government.
"We need more manpower and more equipment," Romualdez pleaded. "A six-day-old body is quite heavy. You would need three or four people to carry it.
"Let's get the bodies out of the streets. They are creating an atmosphere of fear and depression."
City officials estimate that they have collected 2,000 bodies but insist many more need to be retrieved. The UN fears that 10,000 people may have died in Tacloban city alone, but President Aquino has described that figure as "too much".
While the retrieval of the dead gets going, there are growing fears for the health of those who survived.
The World Health Organization says there are significant injuries that need to be dealt with -- open wounds that can easily become infected in the sweltering tropical heat.
Experts warn that a reliable supply of clean drinking water is vital if survivors are not to fall victim to diarrhea, which can lead to dehydration and death, especially in small children.
The city government remains paralyzed, with an average of just 70 workers compared to 2,500 normally, he added. Many were killed, injured, lost family or were simply too overcome with grief to work.
The government was distributing 50,000 "food packs" containing 6 kg (13 lb) of rice and canned goods each day, but that covers just 3 percent of the 1.73 million families affected by the typhoon.
Aquino in spotlight
Aquino has been on the defensive over his handling of the storm given warnings of its projected strength and the risk of a storm surge, and now the pace of relief efforts.
He has said the death toll might have been higher had it not been for the evacuation of people and the readying of relief supplies, but survivors from worst-affected areas say they had little warning of a tsunami-like wall of water.
Aquino has also stoked debate over the extent of the casualties, citing a much lower death toll than the 10,000 estimated by local authorities. Official confirmed deaths stood at 2,357 on Thursday, a figure aid workers expect to rise.
City administrator Lim, who on Sunday estimated 10,000 likely died in Tacloban alone, said Aquino may be deliberately downplaying casualties.
"Of course he doesn't want to create too much panic. Perhaps he is grappling with whether he wants to reduce the panic so that life goes on," he said.
The preliminary number of missing as of Thursday, according to the Red Cross, remained at 22,000. It has cautioned that that number could include people who have since been located.
Tacloban's main convention center, the Astrodome, has become temporary home for hundreds of people living in abject squalor. Families cooked meals amid the stench of garbage and urine. Debris was strewn along rows of seats rising from dark pools of stagnant water.
"We went into the Astrodome and asked who is in charge and just got blank stares," said Joe Lowry, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, which is setting up camps for the displaced.
Survivors formed long queues under searing sunshine, and then torrential rain, to charge mobile phones from the only power source available: a city hall generator. Others started to repair motorbikes and homes. A rescue worker cleared debris near a wall with the spray-painted words "We need food".
More the 544,600 people have been displaced and nearly 12 percent of the population affected, the United Nations said. But many areas still have not received aid.
"It's true, there are still areas that we have not been able to get to where people are in desperate need," UN humanitarian aid chief Valerie Amos, who had visited the shattered city of Tacloban on Wednesday, told reporters in Manila. "I very much hope that in the next 48 hours, that will change significantly.
"Yes, I do feel that we have let people down because we have not been able to get in more quickly.
"Those who have been able to leave have done so. Many more are trying. People are extremely desperate for help," she said.
"We need to get assistance to them now. They are already saying it has taken too long to arrive. Ensuring a faster delivery is our... immediate priority."
The world body's leader Ban Ki-moon, currently in Latvia, later added UN agencies and teams "are on the ground to provide the necessary humanitarian assistance".
"Especially in the southern part there are tens of thousands of people exposed to the elements. We are doing everything possible to rush assistance to those who need it."
Anger and frustration
Anger and frustration have been boiling over as essential supplies fail to reach many of those in need. Food and other goods have stacked up at the airport in Tacloban, for instance.
Some areas have appeared to teeter near anarchy amid widespread looting of shops and warehouses for food and water.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) described a bleak situation in Guiuan.
"People are living out in the open ... The needs are immense and there are a lot of surrounding villages that are not yet covered by any aid organizations," Alexis Moens, MSF's assessment team leader, said in a statement.
Lim said 90 percent of Tacloban had been destroyed by the typhoon and the wall of seawater it shoved ashore. Only 20 percent of residents were getting aid while houses were being looted because warehouses were empty, he added.
There were also not enough flights from Tacloban airport to cope with the exodus from the stricken city.
Many people complained that military families were given priority to board the C-130 cargo planes.
"If you have a friend or relative in the military, you get priority," said Violeta Duzar, 57, who had waited at the airport since Sunday with eight family members, including children.
The overall financial cost of the destruction was hard to assess. Initial estimates varied widely, with a report from German-based CEDIM Forensic Disaster Analysis putting the total at $8 billion to $19 billion. (Additional Reuters reports from Rosemarie Francisco and Eric dela Cruz in Manila, Phil Stewart in Washington and Greg Torode in Hong Kong)
source: interaksyon.com
