Typhoon Haiyan: Philippines destruction 'absolute bedlam'

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''We are so very hungry and thirsty'' one survivor told the BBC's Jon Donnison in Tacloban

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Typhoon Haiyan

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The head of the Red Cross in the Philippines has described the devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan as "absolute bedlam".

Officials estimate up to 10,000 people have died in Tacloban city and hundreds elsewhere. Hundreds of thousands of people are displaced.

The typhoon flattened homes, schools and an airport.

It has since made landfall in northern Vietnam, near the Chinese border, where it has weakened to a tropical storm.

Supplies

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At the sceneJon DonnisonBBC News, Tacloban

Tacloban has been flattened. Driving down the main high street, hardly a single building is left standing.

People say this town was hit by a wall of water when the typhoon hit on Friday. There is the stench of rotting corpses. Driving in from the airport, we saw scores of bodies lying by the roadside. For three days they have been there, with no one to bury them.

People are desperate for food, clean water and shelter. At the badly battered airport, a makeshift hospital has been set up. We saw two young women giving birth, laid out among the debris.

Aid is getting in, but slowly. And this is just one town, in one province. No-one knows the full extent of the devastation elsewhere.

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Four million people have been affected in the Philippines, and many are now struggling to survive without food, shelter or clean drinking water.

A huge international relief effort is under way, but rescue workers have struggled to reach some towns and villages cut off since the storm.

"There's an awful lot of casualties, a lot of people dead all over the place, a lot of destruction," Richard Gordon, head of the Philippine Red Cross, told the BBC.

"It's absolute bedlam right now, but hopefully it will turn out better as more and more supplies get into the area."

He said roads had now been cleared to allow relief workers to get to the hardest hit areas, but that they expected to find many more casualties.

"It's only now that they were able to get in and we're beginning just to bring in the necessary food items... as well as water and other things that they need." Continued