Desperation Grows in the Philippines As Aid is Slow to Arrive

"The BBC's Jonathan Head in Tacloban, a devastated city of 220,000 on Leyte island, says Wednesday brought the first signs of an organised response [to Typhoon Haiyan]," reports the BBC. "US military planes have been arriving at Tacloban's ruined airport, delivering World Food Programme supplies, which can be carried by helicopter to outlying regions, and a French-Belgian field hospital has been set up."

However, writing in The New York Times, Keith Bradsher notes that, "Typhoon relief gridlock threatened to paralyze rescue operations in the most devastated part of the Philippines on Wednesday, with aid piling up but few ways to distribute it, plentiful gasoline but no merchants willing to sell it, and an influx of emergency volunteers with no places to house them."

Though relief may be on the way, desperation is beginning to spread in the devastated city, five days after the storm struck. "Many people have left Tacloban, says our correspondent, but among those left behind there is a growing sense of panic and fear, not just of food running out but of law and order breaking down," adds the BBC.