Asia

Aquino under pressure over typhoon aid, U.S. carrier on its way

14 Nov 2013 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Philippine President Benigno Aquino was under growing pressure on Thursday to speed up the distribution of food, water and medicine to desperate survivors of a powerful typhoon and to revive paralyzed local governments.

While international relief efforts have picked up, many petrol station owners whose businesses were spared have refused to reopen, leaving little fuel for trucks needed to move supplies and medical teams around the devastated areas nearly a week after Typhoon Haiyan struck.

"There are still bodies on the road," said Alfred Romualdez, mayor of Tacloban, a city of 220,000 people reduced to rubble in worst-hit Leyte province. "It's scary. There is a request from a community to come and collect bodies. They say it's five or 10. When we get there, it's 40."

The scarcity of trucks presents grim options. "The choice is to use the same truck either to distribute food or collect bodies," he added.

Outside Taclaban, officials began burying about 300 bodies in a mass grave on Thursday. A larger grave will be dug for 1,000, city administrator Tecson John Lim told Reuters.

The city government remains decimated, with just 70 workers compared to 2,500 normally, he added. Many were killed, injured, lost family or were simply too overcome with grief to work.

The USS George Washington aircraft carrier was due to arrive in the Philippines on Thursday evening, with 5,000 sailors and more than 80 aircraft. Japan was also planning to send up to 1,000 troops as well as naval vessels and aircraft, in what could be Tokyo's biggest postwar military deployment.

AQUINO IN SPOTLIGHT

Aquino has been on the defensive over his handling of the storm given warnings of its projected strength and the risk of a storm surge, and now the pace of relief efforts.

He has said the death toll might have been higher had it not been for the evacuation of people and the readying of relief supplies, but survivors from worst-affected areas say they had little warning of a tsunami-like wall of water.

The Philippines formally asked Washington for help on Saturday, a day after the storm slammed into cities and towns in the central Philippines, the U.S. State Department said.

Aquino has also stoked debate over the extent of the casualties, citing a much lower death toll than the 10,000 estimated by local authorities. Official confirmed deaths stood at 2,357 on Thursday, a figure aid workers expect to rise.

City administrator Lim, who on Sunday estimated 10,000 likely died in Tacloban alone, said Aquino may be deliberately downplaying casualties. "Of course he doesn't want to create too much panic. Perhaps he is grappling with whether he wants to reduce the panic so that life goes on," he said.

The preliminary number of missing as of Thursday, according to the Red Cross, remained at 22,000. It has cautioned that that number could include people who have since been located.

Tacloban's main convention center, the Astrodome, has become temporary home for hundreds of people living in abject squalor. Families cooked meals amid the stench of garbage and urine. Debris was strewn along rows of seats rising from dark pools of stagnant water.

"We went into the Astrodome and asked who is in charge and just got blank stares," said Joe Lowry, a spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration, which is setting up camps for the displaced.

Survivors formed long queues under searing sunshine, and then torrential rain, to charge mobile phones from the only power source available: a city hall generator. Others started to repair motorbikes and homes. A rescue worker cleared debris near a wall with the spray-painted words "We need food".

More the 544,600 people have been displaced and nearly 12 percent of the population affected, the United Nations said. But many areas still have not received aid.

"It's true, there are still areas that we have not been able to get to where people are in desperate need," U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos told reporters in Manila. "I very much hope that in the next 48 hours, that that will change significantly.

"Yes, I do feel that we have let people down because we have not been able to get in more quickly."

Anger and frustration have been boiling over as essential supplies fail to reach many of those in need. Food and other goods have stacked up at the airport in Tacloban, for instance.

Some areas have appeared to teeter near anarchy amid widespread looting of shops and warehouses for food and water.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) described a bleak situation in Guiuan, home to 45,000 people.

"People are living out in the open ... The needs are immense and there are a lot of surrounding villages that are not yet covered by any aid organizations," Alexis Moens, MSF's assessment team leader, said in a statement.

LOOTING IS "SELF-PRESERVATION"

Lim said 90 percent of Tacloban had been destroyed by the typhoon and the wall of seawater it shoved ashore.

Only 20 percent of residents were getting aid while houses were being looted because warehouses were empty, he added.

"The looting is not criminality. It is self-preservation," Lim said.

There were also not enough flights from Tacloban airport to cope with the exodus from the stricken city.

As darkness fell on Wednesday, Philippine Special Forces held back hundreds of people, many of whom had walked for hours to reach the airport and then waited for days with little or no food or water.

When asked how she and her four children endured three days of waiting in searing heat and torrential downpours, Marivic Badilla, 41, held up a small battered umbrella. "We have been sheltering under this," she said, tears streaming down her face.

Many people complained that military families were given priority to board the C-130 cargo planes.

"If you have a friend or relative in the military, you get priority," said Violeta Duzar, 57, who had waited at the airport since Sunday with eight family members, including children.

None of the aid passing through the airport had been distributed to the needy crowd at its gates.

The overall financial cost of the destruction was hard to assess. Initial estimates varied widely, with a report from German-based CEDIM Forensic Disaster Analysis putting the total at $8 billion to $19 billion.

(Additional reporting by Rosemarie Francisco and Eric dela Cruz in Manila, and Phil Stewart in Washington. Writing by Jason Szep. Editing by Dean Yates and Nick Macfie)

(Source : Reuters)

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