Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Standing water is seen in the altar area Nov. 20 of the roofless St. Lawrence the Martyr Church in the coastal Philippine town of Balangig,a devastated by super typhoon Haiyan (CNS photo/Nathan Layne, Reuters)

Weeks after Typhoon Haiyan tore through the central Philippines, Catholic aid workers were continuing their emergency response. “The needs are basically huge,” said Sandra Harlass, an emergency relief coordinator for Malteser International, after returning to Manila from communities across the strait from the worst-hit city of Tacloban. “Ninety percent of the houses are destroyed...most were just washed away from the storm surge.” She said, “Together with the houses, of course, all the food supplies were washed away, all the nonfood items, like blankets, mosquito nets, everything is just gone.” The team of emergency relief assessors found people who had very little to eat nine days after the storm struck. A 15-foot storm surge struck Tacloban after the typhoon on Nov. 8, creating a tsunami-like effect that swallowed up people in its fast-rising floods and left bodies strewn about in its wake. The area suffered most of the more than 5,200 deaths recorded so far.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

Some polls are going as far to predict that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak might lose his own seat on July 4. He would be the first Conservative prime minister to suffer such a humiliation.
David StewartJuly 01, 2024
“The Eucharist is the food that makes us hungry,” says Eucharistic Revival preacher Joe Laramie, S.J., so when he preaches, he hopes to stir his congregation “to deeper hunger for the Lord, to grow in deeper devotion to him.”
PreachJuly 01, 2024
The Vatican’s first auditor general, Libero Milone, who was forced to resign in June 2017, claims he was framed and says Pope Francis was deceived by Cardinal Angelo Becciu.
Gerard O’ConnellJuly 01, 2024
"Magdalene: I am the utterance of my name" is advocating for setting the record straight on one of Christianity’s most vital disciples.
Michael O’BrienJune 28, 2024