“Ten thousand, I think, is too much…” : Filipino president

Filipino President Benigno Aquino says death toll from the super Typhoon Haiyan is closer to 2,000 or 2,500 rather than the 10,000 previously estimated.

“Ten thousand, I think, is too much,” Aquino said on Tuesday, adding, “There was emotional drama involved with that particular estimate.”

The Filipino president stated that the government was still gathering data from storm-hit areas, which might raise the death toll.

“We’re hoping to be able to contact something like 29 municipalities left wherein we still have to establish their numbers, especially for the missing, but so far 2,000, about 2,500, is the number we are working on as far as deaths are concerned,” he said.

On Tuesday, the official death toll stood at 1,774.

On Friday, Haiyan tore through the central Philippines and flattened Tacloban, the coastal capital of Leyte province where many were feared dead mostly by drowning in a tsunami-like wall of seawater.

“There are hundreds of other towns and villages stretched over thousands of kilometers that were in the path of the typhoon and with which all communication has been cut,” said Natasha Reyes, emergency coordinator in the Philippines at international aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) on Tuesday.

“No one knows what the situation is like in these more rural and remote places, and it’s going to be some time before we have a full picture,” Reyes added.

On Monday, Aquino declared a state of national calamity in the country to enable the government to respond more effectively to the devastation and chaos caused by the monster typhoon.

“Basically, the only branch of government that is working here is the military… That is not good. We are not supposed to take over government,” Filipino Army Major Ruben Guinolbay said in Tacloban on Tuesday.

Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas also said Tacloban’s government was wiped out as many officials were dead, missing, or too grieved to come to work. Only 20, out of the city’s 293 police officers, had shown up for duty.

“Today, we have stabilized the situation. There are no longer reports of looting. The food supply is coming in. Up to 50,000 food packs are coming in every day, with each pack able to feed up to a family of five for three days,” Roxas said.

According to the United Nations, about 660,000 people have been displaced by the storm and many have no access to food, water or medicine.

The country, which is an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, sees about 20 typhoons per year.

Last year, Typhoon Bopha flattened three coastal towns on the southern island of Mindanao, killing more than 1,100 people and causing damage estimated at $1.04 billion.