Australian medical team head to Philippines to support Typhoon Haiyan victims

Updated November 13, 2013 08:55:00


Source: AM | Duration: 4min 52sec

Topics: cyclones, doctors-and-medical-professionals, philippines, australia


TONY EASTLEY: By this evening it's hoped that an Australian medical team will be on site in the devastated city of Tacloban in the Philippines.

Eight doctors, 15 nurses and support staff, including a radiographer, are due to fly out of Darwin today. They face a challenging and desperate situation when they arrive.

Correspondent Stephen McDonell is in the Philippines.

Stephen McDonell, good morning. Are you seeing there yet where you are the full force of international aid arriving?

STEPHEN MCDONELL: Yes well, I'm speaking to you from (inaudible) military airport in Cebu where, I'm not sure if you can hear it, but a C130 is loading up its engines. They're pouring on material to be taken into Tacloban, food, medical supplies, and there are also some soldiers joining them as well.

And so yes, this is the main staging point now for the entire area. Anything that comes in now is coming through Cebu, then they're putting them on these military transports and then from here taking them up into the worst affected areas.

TONY EASTLEY: Stephen, it's one thing to get the aid into Tacloban. Are the aid workers confident they can get to the areas of most need with that aid?

STEPHEN MCDONELL: I wouldn't say confident. There are still a lot people they're not anywhere near helping. There are so many islands, they are so remote. To be able to reach these flattened communities is so difficult and so - even for example Tacloban, at least there's an air strip there.

There are lots of smaller islands with no air strip. So they're well short of being confident that they're helping anybody. In fact they're struggling to reach the people even in the most densely populated areas.

TONY EASTLEY: The situation is dire, very hard for most of us to imagine. How are the authorities coping with, say, the control of the population, given that so much is in such shortage?

STEPHEN MCDONELL: Well what they've had to do is on certain flights, we've been watching lots of these C130s taking off out of Cebu airport, and in places where you would have had aid they've had to be putting special forces soldiers on there. And as soon as they hit the ground at the other end they come pouring out and start carting the aid shipments.

And they've already started shooting people, saying at least in one case they've shot dead two looters, apparently Communist insurgents who tried to intercept an aid convoy.

But I should say the other thing that's quite strange, where I am now, the mood is pretty buoyant. You know, there's the military here, they're trying to help people. They've got the aid agencies here. It's all being coordinated and it's sort of pretty well going out to where it's most needed.

However, the C130s they go out in one direction with the aid, then they land and they come back in here from places like Tacloban. Those who've been affected walk through quietly, like zombies really. They just come, staring at their feet, and they walk back through and all of a sudden the mood here changes and you see the people who've been living through the devastation caused by this powerful typhoon.

TONY EASTLEY: So that evacuation of people of Tacloban will go on indefinitely, do you think?

STEPHEN MCDONELL: It certainly will. (Inaudible) keep taking these military planes packed full in one direction, and then they'll return with people coming back in the other. And they'll keep doing that till they can clear, well, I'd have to imagine the majority of the population out of Tacloban, because there's nothing there.


And then there are all these communities beyond Tacloban. So people are walking into Tacloban from much more isolated, devastated areas, hoping for some help.

What they're finding it's the remnants of the city that used to be there. So really they've got to get a lot of people out of there, at least so they can start clearing the debris and start building tent cities and the like and having just some sort of a semblance of a recovery. At the moment it's still a rescue operation really.

TONY EASTLEY: And Stephen, what's your plan there?

STEPHEN MCDONELL: Our plan is to get onto one of the military planes and fly into Tacloban today. The aid (inaudible) team have been battling in that most devastated area. Now they're pretty short on water and food like everybody else and so we'll attempt to get in there on one of these flights to give them a bit of assistance. Our bags are jammed full with food and water, they're pretty heavy.

We were actually initially getting on the plane that you can hear right now but they've just told us no reporters getting on this flight. I'm standing next to another journalist from the Guardian who's been bumped as well because they're prioritising the military and medics and it's pretty hard to argue with that I guess.

TONY EASTLEY: Our correspondent Stephen McDonell in the Philippines.