Grim Count Continues In Philippines

MANILA—The official accounting of casualties and damage wrought on the Philippines by Typhoon Haiyan continued to grow Saturday, with a significant jump in the number of missing.

The latest death toll is 3,633, while 1,179 people are missing and total damage is $227.4 million, mostly suffered in the agricultural sector on the hard-hit islands of Leyte and Samar, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said.

The first bulletin issued Friday had 2,360 dead, 77 missing and $93 million in damage.

The latest death toll is higher than the upper estimate of 2,500 given by PresidentBenigno Aquino III earlier this week.

Estimates of the dead have varied widely, underscoring the challenge of juggling tending to the pressing demands of survivors while finding, identifying and accurately recording those who perished in one of the Southeast Asian country’s worst storms.

The United Nations, quoting reports from the Philippine Department of Social Welfare and Development, late Thursday reported a death toll of 4,460. A police general in one of the affected provinces was dismissed from his post after saying the fatalities could reach 10,000 dead.

Tacloban, the center of massive international relief operations, is the capital of Leyte, where the disaster agency has so far recorded that Haiyan claimed 3,017 lives.

Undersecretary Eduardo del Rosario, the chief of the disaster agency, said the official counts are being done painstakingly to ensure “they would be, more or less, closer to the truth.” He said there have been initial reports that were double what was later verified by his agents in the field.

Haiyan’s howling winds devastated crops in the mainly agricultural central Philippines, damaging more than 155,000 hectares planted with rice, corn, sugar cane and coconut trees.

Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala told The Wall Street Journal that the estimated damage of $209 million could rise further as his agency reaches more areas hammered by the typhoon.

Meantime, the government said aid distribution is improving, with relief workers reaching more affected villages. Still, only half of 44 towns of Leyte province have been supplied with relief goods.

Presidential deputy spokesperson Abi Valte told reporters that the Department of Health is vaccinating residents of affected areas to reduce the chance of the spread of communicable diseases, such as measles and typhoid. She said a total of 14 hospitals in Leyte, seven in Tacloban, are open.

She said that Interior and Local Governments Secretary Manuel Roxas has instructed the operation groups to coordinate with the Navy to collect corpses that floated out to sea.

Meanwhile, a local radio station said five bodies, including two children, were pulled out of the waters off Tacloban City on Saturday.

Through the week, rumors circulated that security in Tacloban was deteriorating, and aid workers might be pulling out because of safety concerns. But some of the major aid organizations interviewed said such rumors were mostly unfounded, that relief operations were proceeding normally, and there were no plans to pull people out.

“We haven’t had any major incidents and have no thoughts of people coming out,” said Bernd Schell, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.