Only when Lynette Lim started to walk into Tacloban City, a few hours after ‘Super’ Typhoon Haiyan wreaked unimaginable devastation across the Philippines, did she realise how lucky she herself had been to survive the storm.
“Everything was just flattened,” said Miss Lim, the Asia communications manager for Save the Children, who arrived in Tacloban with a group of aid workers assessing the potential need for help just 24 hours before Haiyan smashed into the city on Friday.
“The water was knee high and there were bodies floating in the streets. I saw several dead children. I’d say two out of every five corpses I saw were kids. Most of the houses were wooden and they were completely destroyed.
“There were trees and electrical poles strewn across the road and corrugated iron roofing that had been ripped off houses.”
Making her way through the villages south of Tacloban, she discovered the full extent of the horrific damage caused by winds that came close to 200 mph, and storm surges that sent waves as high as the second storey of houses crashing ashore.
