Updated Nov. 10, 2013 2:53 a.m. ET
Tacloban city, in Leyte province, central Philippines Saturday. Associated Press
MANILA—The Philippine National Red Cross said Sunday that the death toll from supertyphoon Haiyan could run into the thousands, adding that it is difficult to perform the grim calculations because the massive storm left bodies scattered over wide areas.
Photographs and video taken Sunday in Tacloban—a city especially hard hit—showed dead people being pulled from rubble and mud, cars and boats tossed into piles and homes shredded.
[h=4]Photos[/h]
A mother and her son walked under damaged electric cables after supertyphoon Haiyan battered Tacloban city. Reuters
"This is a monumental disaster. As of now, there's no time to count the bodies. The dead bodies are not in one place like what happened in Ormoc," Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross, told The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Gordon, a former senator, was referring to the 1991 flash floods caused by a typhoon in Ormoc City on the island of Leyte which claimed more than 5,000 lives—the most on record caused by a storm in the Philippines.
Health Assistant Secretary Eric Tayag, who was with a medical team deployed to set up three mobile hospitals in Tacloban, said the government is considering digging a mass grave to bury the dead there.
The National Disaster and Risk Reduction Management Council said the typhoon has affected more than 4.5 million people in the 36 provinces in the central Philippines and in the southern part of the main island of Luzon. It said more than 477,000 people were displaced by Haiyan and 400,000 of them are in evacuation centers.
Haiyan, locally known as Yolanda, pounded three dozen provinces in the central Philippines and the southern section of the main island of Luzon with gale-force winds that stirred five-yard-high storm surges that flooded coastal towns.
Raw video, much of it posted on social media, shows the huge waves, dangerous winds and widespread destruction in the central Philippines caused by Supertyphoon Haiyan. Officials expect the death toll to be substantial. Photo: Instragram/Francis Rufo
Typhoon Haiyan slammed the Philippines, ripping through the city of Tacloban. Over 150 deaths have been reported, and the toll is expected to rise. Officials said the typhoon sustained winds of 147 mph, with gusts of up to 170 mph. Photo: AP
The typhoon made landfall Friday along the eastern seaboard of the Philippines. It hammered Leyte island, with the provincial capital Tacloban City apparently bearing the brunt of the typhoon.
The typhoon is now headed toward northern Vietnam, where it is expected to make landfall this evening. Though much weaker, the typhoon is forecast to trigger heavy rains that Vietnamese authorities fear may cause dangerous floods and landslides in northern provinces, including Hanoi.
The death count in the Philippines as of early Sunday was officially 151, according to the National Disaster and Risk Reduction Management Council. Of those, 134 deaths were reported in Tacloban and its neighboring town of Palo.
"There are dead bodies in other towns. In Tacloban, maybe hundreds more or thousands more," Mr. Gordon said. "The storm surge was strong," he said.
The Associated Press quoted regional police chief Elmer Soria as saying that Leyte provincial Gov. Dominic Petilla late Saturday told him there could be about 10,000 deaths in the province, mostly by drowning and from collapsed buildings. The governor's figure was based on reports from village officials. The head of a United Nations disaster team that arrived in Tacloban on Saturday to assess the damage for humanitarian assistance compared the devastation to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 200,000 in 14 countries.
Rescue workers carry a woman about to give birth at a makeshift medical center at the Tacloban airport Saturday. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
"The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami," said Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, head of the United Nations Disaster Assessment Coordination team.
"This is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like tumbleweeds, and the streets are strewn with debris," said Mr. Stampa. He said that relief efforts will be challenging because roads between the airport and the central city were "completely blocked."
The Philippine weather bureau is now watching a "cloud cluster" over the Pacific Ocean that could form into another storm by next week.
Haiyan is already the 24th storm this year to enter the Philippines, a country that averages 20 storms a year. Weather forecasters said the country could still see two more storms before the year is over.
In Vietnam, the government said Sunday that more than 16,000 police and soldiers have been deployed to stand by in northern and central Vietnam to cope with the typhoon. It has also warned of the safety of 114 dams and water reservoirs located from Thanh Hoa to Binh Dinh province.
Vietnam Airlines, the country's flag carrier, said Sunday that it has canceled 62 flights to and from airports in the central region. Private airline VietJetAir has said that it will cancel all flights to and from Danang, Hue and Vinh.
At least six people have been killed—three in Quang Ngai province, two in Quang Nam province and one in Hue—while they were preparing to cope with the typhoon, according to the Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control.
Though still offshore, Haiyan has brought heavy rains to central and northern provinces that may cause dangerous floods. Rainfall in provinces from Ha Tinh to Binh Dinh ranges from 40 millimeters to 159 millimeters, according to the weather forecasting agency.
—Nguyen Pham Muoi and Vu Trong Khanh in Hanoi contributed to this article.
Write to Josephine Cuneta at josephine [email][email protected][/email] and Cris Larano at [email protected]
Tacloban city, in Leyte province, central Philippines Saturday. Associated Press
MANILA—The Philippine National Red Cross said Sunday that the death toll from supertyphoon Haiyan could run into the thousands, adding that it is difficult to perform the grim calculations because the massive storm left bodies scattered over wide areas.
Photographs and video taken Sunday in Tacloban—a city especially hard hit—showed dead people being pulled from rubble and mud, cars and boats tossed into piles and homes shredded.
[h=4]Photos[/h]
A mother and her son walked under damaged electric cables after supertyphoon Haiyan battered Tacloban city. Reuters
"This is a monumental disaster. As of now, there's no time to count the bodies. The dead bodies are not in one place like what happened in Ormoc," Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross, told The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Gordon, a former senator, was referring to the 1991 flash floods caused by a typhoon in Ormoc City on the island of Leyte which claimed more than 5,000 lives—the most on record caused by a storm in the Philippines.
Health Assistant Secretary Eric Tayag, who was with a medical team deployed to set up three mobile hospitals in Tacloban, said the government is considering digging a mass grave to bury the dead there.
The National Disaster and Risk Reduction Management Council said the typhoon has affected more than 4.5 million people in the 36 provinces in the central Philippines and in the southern part of the main island of Luzon. It said more than 477,000 people were displaced by Haiyan and 400,000 of them are in evacuation centers.
Haiyan, locally known as Yolanda, pounded three dozen provinces in the central Philippines and the southern section of the main island of Luzon with gale-force winds that stirred five-yard-high storm surges that flooded coastal towns.
Raw video, much of it posted on social media, shows the huge waves, dangerous winds and widespread destruction in the central Philippines caused by Supertyphoon Haiyan. Officials expect the death toll to be substantial. Photo: Instragram/Francis Rufo
Typhoon Haiyan slammed the Philippines, ripping through the city of Tacloban. Over 150 deaths have been reported, and the toll is expected to rise. Officials said the typhoon sustained winds of 147 mph, with gusts of up to 170 mph. Photo: AP
The typhoon made landfall Friday along the eastern seaboard of the Philippines. It hammered Leyte island, with the provincial capital Tacloban City apparently bearing the brunt of the typhoon.
The typhoon is now headed toward northern Vietnam, where it is expected to make landfall this evening. Though much weaker, the typhoon is forecast to trigger heavy rains that Vietnamese authorities fear may cause dangerous floods and landslides in northern provinces, including Hanoi.
The death count in the Philippines as of early Sunday was officially 151, according to the National Disaster and Risk Reduction Management Council. Of those, 134 deaths were reported in Tacloban and its neighboring town of Palo.
"There are dead bodies in other towns. In Tacloban, maybe hundreds more or thousands more," Mr. Gordon said. "The storm surge was strong," he said.
The Associated Press quoted regional police chief Elmer Soria as saying that Leyte provincial Gov. Dominic Petilla late Saturday told him there could be about 10,000 deaths in the province, mostly by drowning and from collapsed buildings. The governor's figure was based on reports from village officials. The head of a United Nations disaster team that arrived in Tacloban on Saturday to assess the damage for humanitarian assistance compared the devastation to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 200,000 in 14 countries.
Rescue workers carry a woman about to give birth at a makeshift medical center at the Tacloban airport Saturday. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
"The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami," said Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, head of the United Nations Disaster Assessment Coordination team.
"This is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like tumbleweeds, and the streets are strewn with debris," said Mr. Stampa. He said that relief efforts will be challenging because roads between the airport and the central city were "completely blocked."
The Philippine weather bureau is now watching a "cloud cluster" over the Pacific Ocean that could form into another storm by next week.
Haiyan is already the 24th storm this year to enter the Philippines, a country that averages 20 storms a year. Weather forecasters said the country could still see two more storms before the year is over.
In Vietnam, the government said Sunday that more than 16,000 police and soldiers have been deployed to stand by in northern and central Vietnam to cope with the typhoon. It has also warned of the safety of 114 dams and water reservoirs located from Thanh Hoa to Binh Dinh province.
Vietnam Airlines, the country's flag carrier, said Sunday that it has canceled 62 flights to and from airports in the central region. Private airline VietJetAir has said that it will cancel all flights to and from Danang, Hue and Vinh.
At least six people have been killed—three in Quang Ngai province, two in Quang Nam province and one in Hue—while they were preparing to cope with the typhoon, according to the Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control.
Though still offshore, Haiyan has brought heavy rains to central and northern provinces that may cause dangerous floods. Rainfall in provinces from Ha Tinh to Binh Dinh ranges from 40 millimeters to 159 millimeters, according to the weather forecasting agency.
—Nguyen Pham Muoi and Vu Trong Khanh in Hanoi contributed to this article.
Write to Josephine Cuneta at josephine [email][email protected][/email] and Cris Larano at [email protected]