TACLOBAN CITY – (UPDATE 2, 11:20 a.m.) A regional police chief on Sunday said super typhoon Yolanda is believed to have killed 10,000 people in Leyte, but official death toll by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) has been placed at 151.
If the 10,000 death toll is proven true, the devastation from Yolanda would be the country’s deadliest recorded natural disaster.
“We had a meeting last night with the governor and, based on the government’s estimates, initially there are 10,000 casualties (dead). About 70 to 80 percent of the houses and structures along the typhoon’s path were destroyed,” Soria said.
The scenes in Tacloban, a city of 220,000 people, and other coastal towns were reminiscent of a tsunami aftermath, with concrete slabs the only part of many homes remaining, vehicles flipped over and power lines destroyed.
“This is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like tumbleweed and the streets are strewn with debris,” said Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, the head of a UN disaster assessment coordination team, in Tacloban.
“The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami,” he said, referring to the 2004 disaster that claimed about 220,000 lives.
Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) hit Leyte and the neighboring island with maximum sustained winds of around 315 kilometers (195 miles) on Friday, and generated waves up to three meters (10 feet) high that surged deep inland.
However, while Leyte was believed to have been the worst hit, the carnage extended across a 600-kilometer stretch of islands through the central Philippines.
Confirmed deaths lower, as communications still down
Several dozen deaths had been confirmed in some of these areas, but authorities admitted they were completely overwhelmed and many communities were still yet to be contacted.
NDRRMC spokesman Major Reynaldo Balido said at least five people were reported missing in the wake of the typhoon.
“Many of the additional fatalities came from Calabarzon, Mimaropa, and Western Visayas,” he said.
Balido also noted many more could be missing but not yet reported as communication lines were still down in the affected provinces.
The NDRRMC’s 6 a.m. update said that aside from the 151 dead and five missing, 23 were injured.
“We’re still establishing command and control through logistics and communications,” military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ramon Zagala told AFP.
He said among the communities yet to be contacted was Guiuan, a fishing town of about 40,000 people on Samar island that was the first to be hit after Yolanda swept in from the Pacific Ocean.
About 130 hundred kilometers to the west of Tacloban, the popular tourist islands of Malapascua appeared to be in ruins, according to aerial photographs, with people there unaccounted for so far.
“The coast guard commander cannot communicate with the area. They are cut off in communications and from power,” regional civil defense director Minda Morante told AFP.
Almost a million families affected
NDRRMC said Yolanda had affected 982,252 families or 4,459,468 people in 1,741 villages in 343 towns and 39 cities in 36 provinces. A total of 86,513 families or 403,503 people are staying in 1,425 evacuation centers.
The report said 2,071 houses were destroyed while 1,409 were damaged.
It added 18 roads and one bridge were affected in Southern Luzon, Bicol and Eastern Visayas.
Damage was estimated at P7,215,831.75, including P4.88 million in infrastructure and P2,335,831.75 in agriculture.
Power and communication restoration work is still ongoing in parts of Southern Luzon, Bicol, Visayas, and Caraga region.
Deadliest natural disaster on record
The Philippines endures a seemingly never-ending pattern of deadly typhoons, earthquakes, volcano eruptions and other natural disasters.
It is located along a typhoon belt and the so-called Ring of Fire, a vast Pacific Ocean region where many of Earth’s earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur.
However, if the feared death toll of above 10,000 is correct, Yolanda would be the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded in the Philippines.
Until Yolanda, the deadliest disaster was in 1976, when a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 7.9 earthquake devastated the Moro Gulf on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, killing between 5,000 and 8,000 people.
United Nations leader Ban Ki-moon also pledged that UN humanitarian agencies would “respond rapidly to help people in need.”
Ban is “deeply saddened by the extensive loss of life” and devastation caused by Yolanda, said UN spokesman Martin Nesirky in a statement.
Jason Gutierrez, Agence France-Presse | Philippines News Agency
November 10, 2013 9:42 AM