Desperate ‘Yolanda’ survivors flock in Tacloban, as many want to flee the devastation

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A soldier keep watch, behind him is a PAF C-130 plane loading Typhoon Yolanda survivors for a free air ride. Some survivors intend to go to Cebu where a tent city may soon rise, or to the national capital and stay with relatives, screen grab from an AFP video.

Thousands of survivors of super typhoon “Yolanda” are now trying every means possible to flee to Manila or nearby Cebu due to lack of food and drinking water.

Other looming problems facing city residents are health and sanitation due to still unretrieved bodies and inadequate toilet facilities or clogged comfort rooms.

Evacuees have been crowding the local airport and wharf daily, with the hope of getting free plane or boat rides away from their calamity-stricken city, but these are not readily available.

Still, persistent evacuees continue to hang around in these areas.

“There is no available plane. They will not be accommodated,” said Maj. Gen. Romeo Poquez, Philippine Air Force’s 3rd Air Division commander, who is overseeing the ongoing relief operations and the deployment of air assets to typhoon-hit areas in Samar and Leyte.

In random interviews with some of the evacuees, they said they would like to go to Manila to try their luck there.

They cited that lack of food and potable water prompted them to flee from Tacloban and go to Manila or Cebu where they can stay with relatives and friends.

“Yolanda” left Tacloban city in ruins after pummeling it with winds of more than 300 kilometers per hour, triggering massive storm surges from the sea that killed thousands of people, destroyed buildings and residential houses, among other structures, on Nov. 8.

Business activities in the city have stopped, and the formerly bright economic prospects of the regional capital suddenly became bleak or uncertain. (with PNA report by Ben Cal)

Meanwhile, the port of Matnog town in Sorsogon is in a gridlock with the narrow highway clogged with bus and cargo trucks waiting for their chance to board the roll on-roll off vessels that ply the treacherous sea route crossing of San Bernardino strait that separates Matnog and the town of Allen in Samar.

The place has become a busy transit point of typhoon survivors exiting from Leyte and Samar on their way to southern Luzon and eventually, Metro Manila and elsewhere.

The queue of trucks, vans and buses now occupies a seven-kilometer narrow lane of the Maharlika Highway leading to Matnog Port in Sorsogon. The section could now be the busiest part of the national road network in Bicol.

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