“We're starting to see the turning of the corner,” said John Ging, a top U.N. humanitarian official in New York. He said 107,500 people have received food assistance so far and 11 foreign and 22 domestic medical teams are in operation, including an Israeli one.
“The field hospital capacity that the Israelis can mobilize is top class, and we have seen it very, very effectively in many other crises as well,” he said.
Peter Degrido, a coast guard reserve, was one of the 35 workers trying to move an overturned passenger bus from a road leading to the airport in Guiuan (GEE-won), a town on Samar island. They hitched the bus to a truck with steel cables and made slow progress. Ahead of them lay many downed electricity poles that must be moved next.
“We're clearing debris from the roads leading to the airport and the port so that relief goods and medicine can arrive faster,” Degrido said. “It's devastating to see this. But people are slowly recovering.”
Ging, the U.N. official, said a total of 287,199 houses were hit by the typhoon of which more than half were ruined. Among those who lost their homes was Dionesio de la Cruz.
At 6 a.m., he was hammering together a bed, using scavenged rusty nails. He has already built a temporary shelter out of the remains of his house in Guiuan, about 155 kilometers (100 miles) from Leyte's devastated capital of Tacloban.
Updated on: November 16, 2013 10:49 IST
