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At Least 1,200 Killed in Philippines by Powerful Typhoon
Red Cross Fears 1,000 Deaths in Philippine Typhoon
(35 minutes later)
MANILA — Rescue officials in the Philippines were scrambling on Saturday to get to isolated villages on the islands of Leyte and Samar, amid early estimates of at least 1,200 dead from Friday’s powerful typhoon.
MANILA — The powerful typhoon that swept across the Philippines on Friday cut a path of destruction though several central islands, leaving the seaside city of Tacloban in ruins and leading to early, unconfirmed estimates of at least 1,200 dead.
“The local Red Cross chapter has seen many bodies,” Gwendolyn Pang, the secretary-general of the Philippine Red Cross said in a text message. “They reported an estimate of about 1,000 deaths in Leyte and about 200 from Samar.”
Although the government said it could confirm only about 140 deaths so far, the Red Cross in Manila said its people on the ground were reporting an estimated 1,000 deaths on Leyte Island, where Tacloban is, and about 200 from the neighboring island of Samar.
“An actual body count has to be done to determine the exact number,” she added. “That is only an estimate.”
“The local Red Cross chapter has seen many bodies,” Gwendolyn Pang, the secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, said in a text message. “An actual body count has to be done to determine the exact number.”
Typhoon Haiyan, called Yolanda in the Philippines, ripped through the eastern islands of Leyte and Samar with sustained winds estimated by some meteorologists to be in excess of 190 miles an hour.
By some accounts, Typhoon Haiyan, called Yolanda in the Philippines, was one of the strongest storms on record when it hit land, with some meteorologists reporting sustained winds in excess of 190 miles per hour.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development on Saturday reported that the storm affected 4.28 million people in about 270 towns and cities spread across 36 provinces in the central Philippines.
Photos and television footage showed fierce winds ripping tin roofs off homes and sending ocean water crashing into buildings, some of which crumpled. Footage from Tacloban shows water rushing through the streets of the city, which has an estimated population of 220,000.
The town of Tacloban, on the island of Leyte, was the hardest hit. A wall of ocean water was pushed into the city center. Officials have reported seeing bodies strewn along the roadside and survivors desperately searching for food and water.
Reuters quoted a spokesman for the national disaster agency as saying almost all the houses there were either badly damaged or destroyed, and reported that the manager of the airport, on a strip of land that juts into the ocean, had estimated that water there rose up to 13 feet.
President Benigno S. Aquino III, said in Manila on Saturday that he would visit the most-damaged hit areas on Sunday.
The Associated Press quoted a bicycle taxi driver who lives near the airport as saying that he and his family took refuge in a parked jeep, which was swept away in the roiling waters. The man, Sandy Torotoro, said that as the vehicle floated by, many people screamed for help as they were swept away, waving their hands above the water.
As the typhoon barreled toward Vietnam, where it is expected to hit Sunday morning, roughly 20,000 people were evacuated from Da Nang, a city of nearly 1 million, state media reported. The government mobilized nearly 450,000 soldiers and militia members to deal with the storm, which is expected to weaken slightly.
“But what can we do?” he said. “We also needed to be helped.”
By some accounts the typhoon ranked among the world’s strongest. But officials had hoped that because it moved across the Philippines so rapidly and hundreds of thousands were evacuated, the death toll would be limited. The storm did not linger long enough to deluge the islands with the amount of rain that in the past has caused widespread flooding and mudslides that led to death tolls in the thousands.
Officials have reported seeing bodies strewn along the roadside and survivors desperately searching for food and water.
The storm moved across the country around 25 miles per hour, roughly twice as fast as Typhoon Bopha, which killed more than a thousand people last year, experts said.
The Social Welfare and Development Department reported that the storm affected 4.28 million people in about 270 towns and cities spread across 36 provinces in the central Philippines.
The typhoon slammed into the island of Samar, on the eastern edge of the Philippines, early Friday morning and sped across the islands in the center of the country. Photos showed crumpled wooden buildings, high waves slamming into the shore and, in some cases, people emerging from their houses to find coconuts strewn all over the streets.
President Benigno S. Aquino III said at a news briefing on Saturday evening in Manila that he would visit the hardest-hit areas on Sunday, and that he expected there to be “substantially more” deaths than the 140 the government has confirmed so far. “We are not prepared to say how much more at this point in time, because that is also being collated,” he said.
There were grave concerns before the storm hit that, because of the estimated wind speeds over the ocean, it could have a devastating impact on land.
Mr. Aquino added that the restoration of communications was a priority so that rescue efforts can be coordinated. The government has been flying in military cargo planes carrying food, clothing and shelters, but roads blocked by debris have made distribution difficult.
The alarm may have been advantageous. More than 790,000 people evacuated their homes, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council. Many were housed in evacuation centers.
A United Nations disaster assessment team visited the area on Saturday.
Local radio and television stations reported downed power lines, impassible roads and flooding in some areas caused by surging ocean water. And disrupted communications systems hampered rescue efforts and attempts to assess the damage, particularly in more rural areas.
“The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami,” Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, the head of the team, said in a statement, referring to the 2004 tsunami that devastated parts of Indonesia and other countries. “This is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like tumbleweed, and the streets are strewn with debris.”
The Philippine weather agency measured winds on the eastern edge of the country at about 150 m.p.h., , with some tracking stations recording speeds as low as 100 m.p.h.
“The roads between the airport and the town are completely blocked,” he said, “and relief operations will be extremely difficult.”
The United States Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center used satellite analysis to estimate the storm carried sustained winds of 195 m.p.h., with gusts up to 235 m.p.h., but that measured the center of the storm when it was over the ocean.
“As far as satellite imagery was concerned, it indicated that this was one of the strongest storms on record,” said Roger Edson, the science and operations officer at the United States National Weather Service in Guam.
He said 195 m.p.h. winds would put the storm “off the charts,” but he acknowledged that satellite estimates require further study on the ground to determine if they were accurate.
By Saturday, the storm had left the Philippines, on a path to Vietnam, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Honolulu. In Vietnam, state media reported that an estimated 300,000 people were being evacuated, as forecasters predicted it could be heading toward central Vietnamese cities of Da Nang, a major population center, and Hue, the old imperial capital.
