A soldier lifts a child over the waiting crowd at a gate of the Tacloban airport yesterday.
MANILA: The US said relief channels were belatedly opening up in the typhoon-ravaged Philippines yesterday as the UN admitted it had not acted quickly enough to help survivors.
While President Barack Obama urged Americans to dig deep and other countries upped their aid, the UN’s humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said the scale of the disaster and logistical challenges meant that six days on from the storm, some places remained without help.
“I very much hope that over the next 48 hours that will change significantly,” she told reporters in Manila. “I do feel that we have let people down.”
After criticism at home and abroad of China’s initial offer of a $100,000 cash donation, the Chinese embassy in the Philippines said Beijing will provide an additional 10m yuan ($1.6m) for relief efforts in the form of blankets, tents and other materials.
Transport planes, helicopters, ships and medics are in operation or coming from an array of countries in the Asia-Pacific and Europe, with Australia now raising its total aid contribution to Aus$30m ($28m).
On the ground in the shattered city of Tacloban and around the central Philippines, survivors are pleading for the basics of life from food and water to clothes and medicines -- and security to protect them from mobs pilfering what little aid is getting through.
US officials said the aid operation was slowly getting into gear after daunting challenges posed by shattered ports, roads and communication infrastructure.
The aircraft carrier USS George Washington arrived off the Philippines, one of eight American ships in the region supporting the aid effort.
Washington has committed $20m six days after Super Typhoon Haiyan struck.
The giant carrier, carrying 5,000 sailors who were diverted from shore leave in Hong Kong, has the ability to desalinate large volumes of water.
“The friendship between our two countries runs deep, and when our friends are in trouble, America helps,” Obama said in a statement.
One US official said relief workers were now better able to distribute aid out of Tacloban airport, and that the opening of a land route had given a significant boost by connecting to a sea port.
Criticism is growing over the pace of aid to Tacloban and other areas that were splintered by Typhoon Haiyan when it swept through the central Philippines last Friday. Thousands of desperate survivors are clamouring to get out of a place where clean drinking water is in short supply and many have no shelter. AFP
