TACLOBAN, Philippines, (Reuters) – Philippine President Benigno Aquino was under growing pressure yesterday to speed up the distribution of food, water and medicine to desperate survivors of a powerful typhoon and to get paralysed local governments functioning.
Widespread looting of rice stocks and other supplies broke out across the central Philippines on Wednesday despite the deployment of solders to maintain law and order.
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.
Mayor Alfred Romualdez said worst-hit Tacloban city lacked manpower and vehicles to deliver supplies and to clear bodies off the streets. “We’re on the seventh day and there are still bodies on the road,” he told Reuters.
“It’s scary,” Romualdez said. “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.” He said bodies were being found frequently in different areas of the city.
He expressed disappointment with the overall relief response. “The choice is to use the same truck either to distribute food or collect bodies.”
A U.S. defense official said the USS George Washington aircraft carrier was due to arrive in the Philippines on Thursday evening, along with other ships.
The carrier has 5,000 sailors and more than 80 aircraft on board and will make a significant difference to relief efforts following one of the strongest storms on record. There are already more than 300 U.S. soldiers on the ground.
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.
