The full devastation is beginning to unfold in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan has stunned relief workers, who estimate that as many as 10 million people were affected by the storm that swept through the central Philippines late last week.
According to the New York Times, rescuers faced blocked roads and damaged airports on Monday as they race to deliver desperately needed tents, food and medicines to the typhoon-devastated Philippines. Relief organizations say their provisions are taking three times longer to get there.
About 660,000 people were displaced and many have no access to food, water or medicine, the United Nations said.
"Right now we're operating in a relative black hole of information," said Dr. Natasha Reyes, emergency coordinator in the Philippines for the international medical group Doctors Without Borders, in a statement on Monday. "We know from the very little we can see that the situation is terrible. But it's what we don't see that's the most worrying."
According to the Voice of America, some Filipinos have resorted to looting with reports of grocery stores and shopping malls being ransacked by people in search of food and clean water. The government said Sunday it would send additional military and police personnel to try to restore order.
As two C-130 planes were readying to take off, with relief supplies, the Presidential Cabinet Secretary Rene Almendras briefed reporters on state-run television. He laid out some of the government's biggest challenges in trying to manage the crisis.
"I don't know how to describe it," he said. "Every single square foot of C130 space or every pound of C130 capacity from Manila to Tacloban is critical and how fast we can turn around the planes and so many other details, the fuel for the planes and all that."
Almendras said not knowing whether it is safe to pass certain routes has been a problem. He said the national government needs access to local government knowledge of the different villages so military and national responders can reach those areas.
Authorities estimated that up to 10,000 people may have died. But the government has been unable to give official death toll yet. At the Air Force Base, Nelida Palconite said she was not sure whether she could get on the flight to go home to Tacloban. So she made this plea.
"We need food, we need... everything that you could give us. Medicines, water," she said.
Despite limited resources relief efforts seem to be picking up. According to Associated Press, dozens of countries and organizations pledging tens of millions of dollars in aid. U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos, who is traveling to the Philippines, released $25 million for aid relief on Monday from the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund. Amos and the Philippines government are due to launch an appeal and action plan on Tuesday to deal with the disaster.
