© Dennis Sabangan/EPA Residents search for belongings in the wreckage of Tacloban.
At least 10,000 people are thought to have died in the central Philippine province of Leyte after Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall, lashed the area, swallowing coastal towns, a senior police official said early on Sunday morning.
About 70-80% of the buildings in the area in the path of Haiyan in Leyte province was destroyed, said chief superintendent Elmer Soria. "We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said based on their estimate, 10,000 died," he said.
Tacloban city administrator Tecson Lim said that the death toll in that city alone "could go up to 10,000". Tacloban is the provincial capital of Leyte, with a population of more than 200,000. The Philippine Red Cross said in Tacloban bodies had been found "piled up around the roads" and in churches. Between 300 and 400 bodies had been recovered, Lim said.
Comment: Update 10 November 2013:
The wind speed was not recorded at 395km/h, as we previously reported. At least, we have found no independent confirmation of that. Instead it appears that some broadcasters such as the BBC mistakenly translated 235km/h into '235mph' and the storm suddenly became something bigger than it actually was.
Anthony Watts has more on this here.
Nevertheless, the storm does appear to have wrought severe destruction on another defenceless country whose leaders are more concerned with appeasing the CEO Gods of Multinational Corporations than developing infrastructure to mitigate Nature's forces and improve the people's well-being.