Few left to clear up corpses as city begs for help

Police guarded shops to prevent looting, but there was often no one to carry away the dead – not even those seen along the main road from the airport to Tacloban, the worst-hit city along the country’s remote eastern seaboard.

Typhoon Haiyan is feared to have killed at least 10,000 people, but with the slow pace of recovery, the official death toll remained well below that.

Tacloban resembled a rubbish dump from the air, punctuated only by a few concrete buildings that remained standing.

“I don’t believe there is a single structure that is not destroyed or severely damaged in some way –every single building, every single house,” US Marine General Paul Kennedy said after taking a helicopter flight over the city.

At least two million people in 41 provinces were affected by Haiyan, one of the most powerful recorded typhoons to ever hit land.

Philippine soldiers were distributing food and water in Tacloban, and teams from the United Nations and other international agencies were seen for the first time.

“Please tell my family I’m alive,” said Erika Mae Karakot, a survivor on Tacloban’s Leyte island, as she lined up for aid. “We need water and medicine because a lot of the people we are with are wounded. Some are suffering from diarrhoea and dehydration due to shortage of food and water.”

Around 800,000 people were evacuated ahead of the typhoon, but many centres – brick-and-mortar schools, churches and government buildings -– could not withstand the winds and water surges. Those who had huddled in them drowned or were swept away.

The winds, rains and coastal storm surges transformed neighbourhoods into twisted piles of debris, blocking roads and trapping decomposing bodies underneath. Ships were tossed inland, cars and trucks swept out to sea and bridges and ports washed away.

Residents have stripped malls, shops and homes of food, water and consumer goods. Officials said some of the looting smacked of desperation but in other cases items taken included TVs, refrigerators, Christmas trees and a treadmill. Philippine president Benigno Aquino III said he was considering declaring a state of emergency or martial law in Tacloban.

Meanwhile there were worries that aid would not arrive soon enough.

“We’re afraid that it’s going to get dangerous in town because relief goods are trickling in very slow,” said Bobbie Womack, an American missionary and longtime Tacloban resident from Athens, Tennessee.

“I know it’s a massive, massive undertaking to try to feed a town of over 150,000 people. They need to bring in shiploads of food.”

Haiyan hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippines on Friday and quickly swept across its central islands, packing winds gusting to 170 mph. It inflicted serious damage to at least six islands in the middle of the eastern seaboard, with Leyte, Samar and the northern part of Cebu appearing to bear the brunt of the storm.