Typhoon thought to have killed up to 10,000 in one city alone

Ferocious winds ravaged several central islands, burying people under tons of debris and leaving corpses hanging from trees.

Regional police chief Elmer Soria said he was briefed by Leyte provincial governor Dominic Petilla and told there were about 10,000 deaths in the province, mostly by drowning and from collapsed buildings. The governor’s figure was based on reports from village officials in areas where Typhoon Haiyan struck on Friday.

Tacloban city administrator Tecson Lim said that the death toll in the city alone “could go up to 10,000”. Tacloban is the Leyte provincial capital of 200,000 people and the biggest city on Leyte Island.

On Samar Island, facing Tacloban, Leo Dacaynos, of the provincial disaster office, said 300 people were confirmed dead in Basey town and another 2,000 missing.

He said the storm surge caused sea waters to rise 20 feet when Typhoon Haiyan hit, before crossing to Tacloban.

There are still other towns on Samar that have not been reached, he said, appealing for food and water. Power was knocked out and there was no mobile phone signal, making communication possible only by radio.

Reports from the other four islands were still coming in, so far with dozens of fatalities.

The typhoon barrelled through six central Philippine islands, wiping away buildings and levelling seaside homes with ferocious winds of 147mph and gusts of 170mph. By those measurements, Haiyan would be comparable to a strong Category 4 hurricane in the US, and nearly in the top category, a 5.

It weakened yesterday to 103mph with stronger gusts and was forecast to lose strength further when it hits northern Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa province.

In hardest-hit Tacloban, about 300-400 bodies have already been recovered but there are “still a lot under the debris” Mr Lim said.

Many corpses hung on tree branches, buildings and pavements. “On the way to the airport we saw many bodies along the street,” said Philippine-born Australian Mila Ward, 53, who was waiting at the Tacloban airport to catch a military flight back to Manila.

“They were covered with just anything – tarpaulin, roofing sheets, cardboards.” Asked how many, she said: “Well over 100 where we passed.”

Interior secretary Mar Roxas said a massive rescue operation was under way, saying: “We expect a very high number of fatalities as well as injured,” after visiting Tacloban.

“All systems, all vestiges of modern living – communications, power, water – all are down. Media is down, so there is no way to communicate with the people in a mass sort of way.”

President Benigno Aquino, who landed in Tacloban yesterday for a first-hand look at the disaster, said the government’s priority was to restore power and communications in isolated areas to allow the delivery of relief and medical assistance to victims.

The Philippines has no resources on its own to deal with a disaster of this magnitude, and the US and other governments and agencies are mounting a major relief effort, said Philippine Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon.

At the request of the Philippine government, US defence secretary Chuck Hagel directed America’s Pacific Command to deploy ships and aircraft to support search and rescue operations and airlift emergency supplies.

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said in a message to Mr Aquino that the EC had sent a team to assist the Philippine authorities and “we stand ready to contribute with urgent relief and assistance if so required in this hour of need”.

Even by the standards of the Philippines, which is buffeted
by many natural calamities, the latest disaster shocked the impoverished nation of 96 million people.