this is the place where there is little food. little water and many, many people in need. many people are trying to get out of here, get out of the airport. it seems people have been lining up all night long. they wait at the airport, they, frankly, have nowhere else to go. outside there is what remains of

ta tacloban. it's not a prietty sight. few answers about relief efforts. i just want to bring you up to date on all that we have seen in the last 24 hours. philippines where five days the cleanup has barely started if started at all. >> everything is gone, there's nothing to eat, nothing to drink. >> weed me nor people to help the current situation. >> reporter: help is on the way. 250 u.s. service members are on

the ground in the philippines, and two more ships are on the way. right now, there simply isn't enough aid, and what aid there is, isn't getting out to those who need it most. day after day, thousands come to tacloban airport. the lack of food and water, the decaying bodies lying on the street. but with 800,000 people displaced, many are without options. while others continue to search for loved ones lost in the storm surge. >> only one missing is my eldest daughter. i hope she's alive. >> this woman cries for her mother who's still missing. >> translator: i'm still here in tacloban, she says. i'm still alive. >> makeshift shelters for those left behind have sprung up all over the area. people sleeping wherever they can, desperate to find a dry, safe spot. people around here just have no place else to go.

a lot of them who may have evacuated before the storm are now back in what used to be their homes. there's a makeshift shack. somebody's constructed over there. they tried to collect all the things they could salvage. but it's not much. >> in many places, not much is left but rubble. and the sound of pets waiting foerns who may never return. this makeshift coffin has a piece of rock with the name of a baby who's been placed inside. marian p. alcain is her name. only one year and three months old. at this hospital in tacloban, the wounded and sick wait for treatment but the hospital has no electricity and few supplies. >> we are admitting them as much as we can. because we cannot refuse them. >> it's already too late for this young mother cradling her dead child in her arms. i'm going crazy, she says. i want to go back home. home is not an option for her.

it's not an option for many in this broken city. and nick hayden walsh joins me now. nick, in terms of the relief effort what are you seeing? because when you go out in these neighborhoods, i haven't seen much of a relief effort. >> reporter: indeed. every morning you see this wave of planes coming in but they're limited capacity what they can do. the philippine military, chopping down a tree, rearranging the trash here. we've seen the scale of destruction here, quite a monumental challenge ahead. the real issue i think for many people in the next coming days is whether the government can match that level with the level of aid they need. we simply haven't seen food or heavy machinery or real presence here to turn this around. >> you spent time recently, or last night, during the night, to see what it was like. >> reporter: utterly bizarre. like a ghost town. night causes more ability to be

visible. but many people coming to terms in the quiet spaces with the real loss they've seen around them. >> take a look. >> reporter: does hide some of tacloban's misery. but locals now huddle around what little they have left. the smell of death weighing heavy. so many bodies still unfound. they even hunt for them at night. a dog has led them to this spot where this man has watched them dig up his son and just now his daughter. as the typhoon picked up she suddenly stopped answering his worried text messages. >> this is not her home here? >> no. it's over there. that place there. >> so the wind carried her? >> yeah. the flood and the wind. >> reporter: their mother is still buried somewhere here. >> how will you rebuild yourself? >> reporter: i'm just looking

for the living. >> the debris, police checkpoints, burning tires, signs that security fears, chaos, mean the aid mission isn't moving yet. people left here turning to the church for physical shelter, not spiritual solace, counting those spared and those lost. >> granddaughter and second daughter. >> have you found the bodies? >> my daughter is missing. not yet. it's almost since november 8th until now. >> reporter: one repeated complaint, where is their government? it looks like the end of the world because for so many here, it was. >> i want to talk about the relief efforts going on with ben hemingway from usaid and jeff pinnock from the world food program, wfp. in terms of wfp what are you

doing in terms of distributing food? >> we're working with dswd, the department of social welfare. we have started distributing food that was here already in town that we acquired yesterday. for the swd that is district in the city and around. that distribution is scaling up today. >> when you distribute it, how do you go about doing that? >> dswd is forming family packs at this moment, that they put on trucks and taken to different neighborhoods and distributed. from here, they expect to do large-scale distributions. >> when do you hope to make a big impact here? >> the food that was acquired yesterday is a good start. it's about 2500 metric tons in the city. there's more on the way. we have high energy biscuits coming in. it's got going to take a little while to get the high-energy biscuits in, but the first ones arrived today. the 2500 metric tons of rice is a good start. >> what's been the problems? >> logistics. transport. every vehicle you see has been affected by the storm. the roads are just starting to

open up now. we have trucks coming up from cebu and down from manila to support the effort. >> what about usaid? >> we're working in full support of the philippines government response efforts. prioritizing water, food, hygiene, sanitation. also bringing in a massive department airlift to make sure needed assistance gets to communities as soon as possible. >> are you getting stuff to the airport and then it's up to local authorities to distribute it? or are you also involved in the distribution? >> we will be directly distributing to some of of the outlying communities with the government of the phillipines. we're also supporting agencies like the world food program to rapidly increase their logistical capacity in the last mile to make sure equipment gets out. >> when do you see stuff going out to people? >> we've seen things going out to communities already. yesterday, some marine c-130s landed and we were able to move

things forward to guyan on eastern sumar. today we're bringing in 20,000 shelter kits, hygiene kits. we'll be bringing anything and everything the government of the phillipines asks us to move forward. >> what's in a shelter kit? that's huge. you go out there and people have no place to sleep. they're sleeping under corrugated tin, sleeping outside. what does a shelter kit are? >> they'll be provided with plastic sheeting that's key especially with the continued rainfall. until we're able to fill the logistical pipe light, they'll be using materials they're able to scavenge to build a frame. as you've seen in most of the areas, there's wood, nails, rope. right now we're mostly concerned with getting that sheeting over their head while the additional resources are brought to bear. >> how does this compare to other operations you've worked on? >> so far from down here this is enormous. we have priorities to stabilize at least three major urban populations then we have to move into the coastal areas with urgency, almost immediately. >> when you look around, everything here is gone. >> yes, sir. this although not as widespread as it could have been, the areas

that the typhoon did transit are nearly completely destroyed. most major infrastructures damaged, schools, hospitals, clinics. they're pretty much all gone. so critical first of all is to restore that last mile logistical access so we can start moving commodities into the areas. >> glad you guys are here. thank you for your hard work. appreciate it thanks. world food program and usaid. when we come back we'll talk to a member of the u.s. air force, find out what they are doing here on the ground. there's been a big uptick in u.s. involvement here over the last 24 hours. we'll talk to him ahead. we'll be right back.

this vein the last thing people here need. it's been raining on and off throughout the day. it just adds to the misery of this place. just about everywhere you go you find people just searching for their lost loved ones. there's a man there down there who's cooking, who pointed us to the body of his wife underneath that sheet. there's another person who's died, has been wrapped up in some cloths, some sacks, and left out. the smell in this whole area really is very -- is very strong.

there's no way to know how many people have died in this area. but you can smell it in the air. it's everywhere. and that's just a few blocks from where i'm standing. you find bodies still here all over the place. there's a few people actually collecting. there's very little organization in terms of the philippines side. that's one of the frustrating things for people here. they're not getting information. they're not getting food. they're not getting water. and their needs are great. they really have nothing. everything has been wiped out. i want to bring in barbara starr. we're seeing an increased effort now by the united states here on the ground and also an increased promised effort. barbara, i know you just got off i believe the phone from general kennedy who's frustrated. what are you hearing? >> reporter: that's right, anderson. in the next several hours he's headed in your direction.

the effort to get that airfield up and running. he told me they expect to have nighttime operations beginning this evening your time in tacloban. that of course as you know better than anybody is going to be a huge help. the next big step, at least two amphibious war ships are on the way from japan. they will bring very specialized capability. they will have tracked vehicles. think of it as vehicles with like tank treads on them that will be able to move out into these remote areas, go right through the debris if need be and get supplies out to the distribution points in the most hard-hit areas. there'll also be more helicopters onboard these ships and more ability for water purification. this now puts a total within the next couple of days of seven u.s. military ships in the area that will have the ability to deliver aid by air, by land, water purification and start bringing in supplies, plus getting the airport open around

the clock will significantly increase, they hope, the number of flights. but general kennedy also telling me he's very frustrated right now that was certainly his view at the moment. he needs a certain type of aid. the world community is responding as it always does in these situations. but as the u.s. commander on the ground, he needs specific help. and he says what his priorities are are nothing fancy. he wants shelters for people. he wants to get people off the streets and into shelters. more water, more food, more medical help, although he believes the medical facilities in the immediate area are pretty good at this point. but anderson, this isn't so nice to talk about on tv. sanitation. what general kennedy was telling me is, there are countries that want to send portable toilets. it's going to take a long time to get enough there. and he doesn't need that kind of

fancy equipment. he is looking at trying to burn sewage just to get as much done as he possibly can. anderson? >> you know, barbara, on the medical front, you can maybe just pass this along. i've talked to a lot of people who say that there are three local hospitals. they're not accepting patients anymore. they said they don't have electricity. they don't have supplies. right now patients say the only place they can go is basically right over there. there's what used to be a small clinic. it's now overrun with patients. i talked to two doctors there, both of whom say they are overwhelmed. they need more doctors. they say they don't have enough supplies. what's really frustrating, they say they don't even have enough water and food at that clinic to deal with all the people they are seeing coming to them. there are people, an old man died there last night, three people have given birth there. they're dealing with all manner of injuries. so there's still a lot of needs. that's just here at the airport. i want to bring in captain john seamus, correct?

>> yes. >> good, i didn't mess it up. you're here, you're with the air forcer what's your job here? >> i'm with the air fighter squadron based in japan. i'm with the combat patrollers. our primary job is to help the filipinos re-establish this air field and make sure it's efficient for 24 hours a day. >> that's the priority to get this up and running in 24 hours. how long is that going to take and what does that require? >> well, for example, yesterday, we arrived, and the lights on the runway weren't working. we set up lights. as of yesterday the lights are working again. but then the next question can we do night operations. what we bring to the effort is to assist during 24-hour operations which includes 12 hours a night operations. >> so you're hoping -- can you put a time frame on when you think you might get it up and running? >> tonight, right now, it's operational. so we're using our capabilities to make sure this is running efficiently starting tonight 1800 our guys will be

controlling aircraft, controlling special operations with aircraft, air base japan to bring in more supplies and evacuate refugees. >> that will be huge. yesterday with the bad weather it was hard to get planes in. you also have some medical assessment capabilities. >> we do have pararescue with us. their primary purpose is personnel recovery, disaster response. they can provide aid up to trauma level, sustain them to a higher level facility. we can help out with that with the locals as well. >> well, i appreciate all you're efforts. thank you so much. >> glad you're here. >> thank you. captain john shamuss with the u.s. air force. it is a ramping up of the efforts by the united states here. and hopefully once this airport is up and running within 24 hours. but the scene here at the airport is really desperate. there are right now hundreds of people here. if you just look, these people are all just waiting. people just kind of come here to the airport hoping maybe to get on a philippine air force c-130

that will take them somewhere else. or they just come here because they have nowhere else to go. there's at least a roof over their heads. but the facilities here, it's overrun. it is a very chaotic situation here. if the airport can get under control that, could be a good base of operations to move forward. when we come back i'll show you what i saw when we went out into the neighborhoods just a few hours ago. we'll be right back.

and welcome back. i'm anderson cooper live here in tacloban, probably the hardest-hit area that we know about. there are still a lot of areas we don't know about in the southern philippines. this is the airport where people just are flocking to. people just hundreds of people, thousands of people, come here, have been coming here, streaming here for days now. they spend all day here, often all night here. i was here at 2:00 a.m. walking through. there were no lights, and people are just sitting. they have no place to sleep. but they have nowhere to go. they bring whatever possessions they can. a lot of them are hoping to get on a c-130, hoping the philippine military will take them to manila if they are

injured. if they have family members that they can be cared for. but there's no guarantees for a lot of people. and the lines to get on the c-130s are very long. this is the first time philippine military personnel are now actually starting to clean up the area around the airport. this is the first time we're actually seeing this. so that is i suppose a sign of progress. but this is five days since the typhoon. and this is the first real tangible sign of a cleanup of the airport area that we're seeing as we just heard from captain john shamuss from the air force. they're planning u.s. military is planning to get this air field up and running on a 24-hour basis by tonight. that would be the first time. that would be a big help in terms of getting relief in here. then the concern is and the difficulty is getting it from the airport out to some of these areas, even getting it a few blocks, though, would be a huge improvement. because as you're about to see, a couple blocks from here there is just nothing but misery.

>> in tacloban, the misery is beyond meaning. this is your home? >> yes. this was my house. >> the first, she says, our house was one of the first to come down. julian sought shelter from the storm surge in this bus with her husband and six children. she survived. they were swept away. >> and has anyone come to help you? >> no. >> i really want to see them, she says, even if it's just their bodies. she has found the body of her husband and shows us the bodies of three of her children. she's covered the kids as best she can. now she searches for her three other children. she doesn't believe they survived the storm. >> where will you sleep tonight? >> here in the street.

anywhere. i don't know where i go. >> in tacloban, there isn't any place to go. juanita martinez is living in a makeshift shelter. his wife gina and daughter are covered with sacks nearby. i really want somebody to collect their bodies, he says. i want to know where they're taken so i can light a candle for them. juanito cooks some rice and noodles for his neighbors. one of the men tells us he wants to call his mother in manila. he's desperate to tell her he and his daughter survived though his wife and two other children are dead. we dial her number on a satellite phone. >> they're gone, they're all gone, he says.

>> i don't know why this happened to me. he won't find answers here in tacloban. you'll only find loss. you'll only find misery. with so little help that is just not going away. >> just about everybody you meet in neighborhoods -- in the neighborhood around here seems to have lost somebody or is searching for somebody. i've met more and more even after shooting that piece we met another woman who was searching for three of her children. she also -- her husband is also dead. then we saw a fire department, a local fire department, which was picking up bodies which was one of the few groups that we saw actually removing bodies. but there are a lot of people out there. that's really why there's no accurate count of how many people have lost their lives here because there's been no concerted effort to retrieve those who have died. many of them, they're all still

just out there laying where they fell. i want to bring in an american missionary. i talked to just before we went on air by the name of jon winn who lives here in tacloban who really escaped the storm surge with his life. i just want to warn you, the audio in this interview when we first started there was a c-130 coming in, so it's a little bit loud, but stick with it. here's john winn. >> john, explain what happened to you during the storm. >> the short of it is, we were in our house expecting of course strong wind and rain. but just a short time after the typhoon started we watched a couple of trees fall in the yard. then i noticed under the front door this black water began to come in rather strong current. then i looked out the window sill.

by the time i comprehended what i saw, the water had almost risen to the level of the window sill. it was quite high, coming in the door quite fast. at that time i realized that we were in some serious trouble. >> how fast was the water rising? >> i wish i could rate it. i would say we were on the entertainment ceiling -- i'm sorry, entertainment center. we were in the ceiling, i would say, in less than -- i'm going to -- of course i could be wrong, but it seemed to me to be about maximum two or three minutes. maximum. and that's about the level of water in our house was around eight feet probably. >> you finally got out of tacloban. when did you finally leave? >> we finally left -- we landed here yesterday about 12:30 or so noontime. >> what do you make of the relief effort that you've been seeing, that you were able to see here? >> well, i really did not -- the

relief effort that i saw was people doing whatever they could do on their own to get food. everything's been looted as far as i know. and it's not because people are bad people. it's because people need food. they need water. they're trying to take care of their families. and it seems like at the time that i was there -- it could have changed drastically after i left. but while we were there, people were -- every day, we had a network of people in our church, grace baptist church in tacloban. every day they were going out trying to find water, rice, any type of food, medicines that they could find. there was no communication, it seemed to regular people, unless they would go to certain locations like the airport or the city hall. they were having a very hard time finding things. i hope that purpose of my doing the interview is just tell everybody that will listen that when i left they needed help and they needed help now. not a few days, not in a few

hours, they needed now and they need a lot of it. >> that's certainly still the case. i appreciate you taking the time to talk to us, john. thank you. >> thank you. >> and that is certainly still the case at this difficult hour. when we come back we're going to show you the children affected by this storm. every piece is important... this part... makes my eyes blue... i might have an increased risk of heart disease... gallstones... hemochromatosis... i'll look into that. the more you know about your dna, the more you know about yourself... now i know. know more about your health. go to 23andme.com and order your dna kit for only 99 dollars today. learn hundreds of things about your health at 23andme.com

we don't have homes. we miss our homes. and we have nothing to eat. we really need help now. i hope you are watching and you see us on tv. we really need the help. because our children don't have rice, no milk, no water, no clean water. and they have fevers. >> the people here in tacloban have great dignity and deserve more than what they have gotten,

frankly. and it's stunning when you go out into the neighborhoods and you talk to people and you find mothers who are all alone searching for their dead children and have had no help and have had no official help, have had nobody other than other neighbors trying to help them find their kids. paula hancocks is joining us. paula, you've been here from the beginning. have you seen a relief effort? have you seen an impact out there? we've seen flights coming in and stuff. there's a lot of -- i know people working hard. but is it getting out there? >> it's certainly not organized. i mean, it's obviously going somewhere but it's just a drop in the ocean compared to to what's needed. we're five days on. the people talking to me are saying i want food, i want water. why are the dead bodies still by the side of the road? >> five days gone. >> it's incredible. they have been there for five days. this is where people are trying to live in the rubbles of their home. >> family members are living next to their dead children. living next to their dead husbands, their dead wives.

>> and you look around here. most people who are here are holding a child or holding a baby. not only are they concerned about the fact they can't get food and water for their baby but they're concerned about the fact the security concerns are getting more intense. they are desperate to get out. it really is humanitarian airlift at the moment. the ones most desperate are the ones with small children. >> the line to get out. you can't see it from here. you may see the umbrellas behind me. it stretches for hundreds of yards, i'm told, right now out in the sun. people just line up and they're just there all day long for a handful of flights out, the chance to get out. because that's really the only option. because it's not as if they're able to shelter someplace and get food and get water. there's just nothing to be had right now. >> exactly. i spoke to one woman just a moment ago. she said it's a miracle that i survived the typhoon and my baby survived the typhoon. she literally reached out as the

water came in and grabs her baby and saved her baby. she asked me am i going to survive this, survive the airport. that's how incredible it is. >> you have been looking at the effect on kids. >> absolutely. there's one heart-warming story. unfortunately most of it is not heart-warming. let's watch it. >> reporter: 11 months old anthony is blissfully unaware how lucky he is to be alive. during the storm, his mother sat her son on her head to keep him above the water level while she held on to the roof rafters. >> all i hear, many crying, many people crying. many people saying help help. >> reporter: lost her husband and many other relatives. >> no, i don't know where we'll go. i hope we can survive. it's very traumatic. it's very hard.

>> reporter: thousands are trying to take their children away from the devastation and the worsening security situation. this mother had twin boys three weeks ago. she's too terrified to stay. >> when we wake up and there's some people inside our house, looters. and they could harm my children and us as well. >> but in the midst of all this pain, there was one ray of hope in this makeshift hospital. a baby girl was born monday in the most challenging of circumstances. her mother, emily, was brought in by neighbors. pregnant women are currently evacuated to give birth but she was too close. >> the baby came out and cried right away. there wasn't any problem. and there was no bleeding. so it was a perfect delivery in a very imperfect environment. once the baby was born, the entire hospital applauded. a baby named baya joy bringing relief in the midst of such intense human suffering.

>> and there have been i think three births in that makeshift hospital which is, for this area is the only hospital. you had talked to somebody who said that they didn't know what a storm surge was. they didn't know to evacuate. >> yes. this sent a chill through me, it really did. this man came up to me and said, why didn't they call it a tsunami? we note word tsunami. if the government had mentioned it will be like a tsunami we would have evacuated. >> no one anticipated -- they didn't know the surge of water would be coming through. that's what caused so many deaths? >> exactly, they assumed it was a high tide or a few waves. he said if the word "tsunami" had been mentioned to people so many more people would be evacuated and live today. >> we'll take a quick break and be joined by all our correspondents. we'll be back in a moment. now i'm a manager. arted, my employer matches my charitable giving. really. i get bonuses even working part-time. where i work, over 400 people are promoted every day. healthcare starting under $40 a month. i got education benefits.

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this is one of the few houses that are still standing, pretty solidly built. some of the houses that are made out of concrete seemed to survive the storm. but you just get a sense of the power of the storm. here's a jeep that's been slammed into the house. then there's this truck that's been lifted up from somewhere and put on top of the jeep. and the smell of rotting -- smell of decay is everywhere around here. there's a cow.

yeah, a dead cow. and it looks like behind it there's the body of a person covered in a green cloth. and that's not an uncommon sight here unfortunately still five days into this storm. our andrew stephens went out with the mayor of tacloban. here's what he saw. >> reporter: in tacloban city, they're calling him the ghost. many people here thought that the city's mayor, alfred romaldez, had died in the typhoon. >> i was in that building, which is by the beach. and the waves were hitting the roof of that building. >> reporter: he's taking me to the scene of his miraculous escape. this was the family resort in the hardest-hit part of the city, right on the edge of the sea.

he takes me through the shattered shell. the mayor and 14 others were here when haiyan struck. the surge devastated the building, six of concrete walls were smashed like tissue paper, he says. >> then suddenly boom the door bang, the other one door blasted open. water gushed in. >> reporter: as the waters rose, seven took their chances outside while the mayor and the rest climbed into the ceiling space. >> here the water was going up. so we had to go all the way in there where we climbed all the way up here. >> reporter: here. >> no. we had to move this over here. >> reporter: and how how high did the water go? >> almost to the ceiling here. >> reporter: there they stayed until it was safe. all 14 survived. but how when so many perished around them? >> you're just free.

then you have to really think before you do something, can you do it. you have to know your capabilities. >> reporter: but it wasn't over yet. he still had to find whether his family had survived in another house about a mile away. they had. >> my wife kept saying, see, i told you, daddy's going to come. i told you he's going to come. and i was the first one there. >> reporter: it was an extraordinary escape, but back in the car he tells me that so many more would have survived if there had been a simple change in the warnings his town was given. >> we've done drills on tsunami. when we do this tsunami, almost about 80% of them really get out. >> reporter: andrew stephens joins me along with paula hancocks and nick paton walsh. paula, you've been here throughout the storm.

how frustrated are you by the relief effort? have you seen much of a relief effort? >> increasingly frustrated. not just me, anderson. you walk around downtown tack cloak tacloban, there's piles of rotting garbage, there's carcasses of animals and there's no real evidence of organized recovery, organized relief going on. i saw a van which was handing out packages of three-day relief. that was perhaps for 50 people. there are thousands, tens of thousands of people who have been affected. they're still saying -- still walking up to us and saying we have no food. we need water. we need help. so at the moment, the frustration levels down there are extraordinarily high. and i don't sense they're still really getting a grip on making this problem as it should be made just ramping up to the scale that's needed. >> you know, richard brennan from the w.h.o. was quoted on npr today saying if haiti's say 10, the philippines is an 11 in

terms of difficulty of an operation like this. really everything has destroyed here. there's very little now to work with. >> demolition not really a constructions job here. they have to go in and clear vast amounts of the town to get rid of dead bodies, remove initial health risk. this airport is getting a lot of military attention perhaps because the media are standing here. all we've seen all day is dozens of people simply trying to leave. there's nothing left for them in that town at all. that's what this part of the world has to deal with. what do you do with the people who used to live here right now, what can you provide them where they used to live. >> of course, the problem they do have with the recovery efforts, it's pretty easy to criticize. but the first responders who usually deal with these type of typhoons are the victims here. they have warehouses filled with goods they usually use with typhoons based around here. they're gone. they're destroyed. they're basically starting from scratch. >> the local police force, a lot of them according to the mayor a lot of them didn't show up in the wake of this, obviously they had their own issues to worry about, their own families to take care of.

it's hard to -- i mean, i don't think pictures, as up -- as many different pictures as we take, it's really hard to get in that small little camera lens, this kind of the scope of the devastation, even though it's not as big as the tsunami in 2004. in banda aceh as we saw in sri lanka. in this area though it's total. >> it's complete particularly on the waterfront area where a lot of the shanty towns are. that is absolutely flattened. the question, the real question here is, how many people actually heeded the advice of the authorities to get out, to evacuate before this hit? now i've been hearing a lot of of stories about people sending out their wives and children and then staying back at their house to guard the property from whatever. a lot of people going back before the storm started as well. if you look at the devastation down there, it will take a long time to actually find out what is under that rubble. and consider this was a 600 kilometer-wide storm. the eye passed us here we're told about 10 kilometers to the south, 8 miles to the south.

you're talking about an swath of devastation right down this coast. >> when we're covering the tsunami in japan just a few years ago, i remember on day one or even day two there were members of the japanese civil defense force, the national defense force, out even though they didn't have heavy earth-moving equipment they were out with sticks going through the rubble trying to find survivors, trying to find those who were lost. i haven't seen that out. i haven't seen a large philippine military presence out in these areas. we've seen it here at the airport and we're seeing they're cleaning up now here parts of the airport which is certainly a good start. but have you seen that in your time out in the field? >> no. i mean, the search and rescue operation doesn't even appear to have got started as far as i can see. i've spoken to officials, i've spoken to the president, and he said we're focusing on the living. but the search and rescue just never seemed to materialize. in japan you barely saw a dead body after day two because they were systematically going through and trying to retrieve bodies and find people who were still alive. they did find people who were

still alive. here, i don't know about you. >> i haven't seen any dogs searching. i haven't seen any people. >> i've seen two dogs in five days i've seen two dogs. >> locals simply trying to fix the problems themselves. the big question is how many people lost their lives. from 10,000 to -- going to have to painstakingly go through debris. the smell as you all know is remarkably overpowering it. so much of it. that gives you a real sense of how bad the devastation was. >> this whole relief story is all about the victims, about what happens to them over the next week or so. i mean, can they hold out? we're getting stories, hearing stories of looting for three or four days now. looting is a bit of a moot point. people desperate to stay alive. the military presence does serve a purpose. it gives a semblance of there is authority here. and that's what's needed. you can't have a town which is lawless, where people think they can do and have to do what they want. the military is there. it is making a difference.

but without aid, that difference doesn't really matter. >> and most people i've talked to would like to see more military out there on their blocks helping out, even searching for their loved ones. there are mothers searching for their children. it's just a sickening sight to see on day five of this. guys, thank you all for all your reporting. we'll be right back. we'll have more here from tacloban.

welcome back. let's get a quick check of the other headlines making news. isha sesay joins us with the 360 bulletin. anderson, two americans kidnapped off the coast of a nigeria coast are free. the captain of the "costa concordia" didn't fall into a lifeboat as he claims but jumped into it. jumped into it according to a crew member testifying at the captain's manslaughter trial in italy. the captain also faces a charge of abandoning ship. 32 people were killed when the "costa concordia" hit a rock and capsized in january 2012. and, anderson, the number one world trade center on the left is the america's tallest skyscraper. dethroning chicago's willis tower, formerly the sears tower. the massive spire atop the new york tower was counted making it

1776 feet tall, a number symbolizing freedom and a proud day for many new yorkers. anderson? >> isha, thanks very much. that's it for us. thanks for watching. "early start" begins right now. the president should honor the commitment the federal government made those people. >> president obama hitting a new low. his popularity is plummeting, as he faces tough criticism from tough leaders of his own party as well. could the white house do anything to turn this mess around? everything's gone. our houses. everything. there's nothing to eat. there's nothing to drink. >> the devastation is growing in the philippines this morning. the relief moving in so slowly to the typhoon survivors who so badly need it. we're live with the latest