Tacloban City: From a commercial aircraft flying several thousand feet in the air, the devastation suffered by Tacloban City is very apparent — coconut trees swept to one side, brown patches of mud stretching across the landscape and houses and buildings with their roofs torn off.
As the aircraft’s doors open, an unwelcome stench of death greets passengers. An eerie silence falls among the people on Flight 5J 426.
One of Flight 5J 426’s passengers is Rowee Balajadia, 45, who the day before had gone to Cebu City frustrated after the aircraft had been unable to land at the airport in Tacloban City due to the heavy traffic on the tarmac caused by arriving cargo planes bearing aid material donated by foreign government and non-government agencies.
While Balajadia’s spirits were lifted because they were finally able to land in Tacloban City, his frustration after seeing the destruction is evident.
“I was not expecting it to be this bad,” he said, choking up. He lost his 82-year-old mother who lives in San Simon town in Leyte. With several kilos of rice and canned goods he and his wife took with them, they immediately set off to his mother’s house on foot.
At the Daniel Romualdez Airport in Tacloban City, departing and arriving passengers took shelter at the terminal — or what is left of it after the devastation left by Typhoon Haiyan. US Navy Construction Brigade engineers move heavy equipment to clear the facility of debris and allow it to operate at full capacity so that more aid cargos coming in can be accommodated.
With their houses destroyed by Haiyan, their loved ones killed by the calamity and nothing to prevent them from leaving Tacloban City, most of the residents have left to other places in droves.
Tacloban City is without power, water, or fuel and is increasingly restive and violence prone. There had been unconfirmed reports of rapes and shootings taking place.
Planeloads of people are camped out at the Romualdez Airport awaiting flights out of Leyte.
Among them are sisters Vicky and Janine who are from Tacloban City.
“We lost our home,” they said.
“We want to leave so we can find work, maybe as house helps, so we can assist our families,” Vicky, 16, added.
At the far end of the row of people awaiting flights is Benito Almendras, who is wheel chair-bound and enduring the blazing sun waiting for his flight.
“I am in the priority list,” he happily said.
A Philippine Army soldier who is part of the security contingent guarding the city from looters said the Philippine Air Force C130 aircraft travelling back and forth taking the typhoon victims from Tacloban City to Cebu and Metro Manila can only accommodate 100 civilian passengers for each flight.
“For those who can’t make it today they can try tomorrow,” the soldier told Gulf News.
Those who have the means, opt to move out of Tacloban City via ferry in Ormoc City.
This Gulf News correspondent witnessed hundreds of people leaving the city for other places.
An official of the Philippine Ports Authority who refused to be named said the number of people leaving through Ormoc City had multiplied in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.
“While there are people going out of Tacloban City through commercial and military flights, most those leaving are doing so through the Port of Ormoc using ferries to Tacloban and other parts of the Visayas and Mindanao,” he said.
As Tacloban City’s landscape and population profile is being redrawn, Ormoc City is poising to replace it in the meantime as the premier urban centre in that part of Visayas.