Philippine Typhoon Survivors Flee City as Aid Trickles In
By Joel Guinto, Cecilia Yap and Clarissa Batino - Nov 13, 2013
Survivors of Typhoon Haiyan sought to flee a city devastated by the storm in the southern Philippines as emergency aid became bottlenecked and hungry and exhausted locals resorted to looting.
“The magnitude of the devastation is overwhelming and our communication lines are still down,” regional military spokesman Lieutenant Senior Grade Jim Alagao said today in the neighboring city of Cebu.
Two Philippine Air Force C-130 planes are making repeated round trips from Cebu to the area that bore the brunt of Haiyan, a super typhoon that the government said killed at least 2,275 people when it hit on Nov. 8. About 1,000 people were lined up at the airport in the city of Tacloban yesterday in a bid to leave and that number is rising, said military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Marciano Jesus Guevara.
“Two cargo planes is not enough, if we can have more we can move things faster,” Guevara said in an interview in Cebu.
As aid agencies called for donations and countries sent supplies and assistance teams, relief efforts were hampered by roads washed away or blocked by debris, a lack of vehicles to transport aid from Tacloban airport, and gridlock at Cebu airstrips. The desperation among survivors in Tacloban led President Benigno Aquino to declare a state of calamity on Nov. 11 and plead with locals to be patient.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-12/philippine-typhoon-destruction-prompts-un-aid-appeal.html
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