Tacloban, Philppines: men and women wait in soaring temperatures to board a C-130. Photograph: Dennin M Sabangan/EPA  While waiting for the C-130 military flight in a Cebu airbase, I talked with three men who had previously made a trip to bring goods to their stricken families in Tacloban, a city devastated by typhoon Haiyan. They described the experience as terrifying and recalled the howling winds that lifted tables off the ground.  I was travelling with two colleagues, Jimmy and Minnie, to a co-ordination meeting with Dinky Soliman, the secretary of the department of social welfare and development in the Philippines. The NGO World Vision has worked with the department on several occasions – on long-term projects as well as relief operations.  The lengthy queue of people, young and old, lining up near the aircraft with food and necessities almost made me cry. Some were bringing sacks of vegetables and tins of biscuits. One man carried a 50kg bag of rice. I saw a woman holding a mattress in one hand and her daughter in the other. How can they endure this suffering? Sadly this might only be the beginning of it.  When we touched down in Tacloban, the desolation and bleakness seemed to engulf a wide area – it was no longer the city I knew. The airport was a mess: passengers had to clamber over broken chairs and rubble to get out, and most of the ceiling was gone.  Outside, cars were strewn upside down. Nearby a long line of people were waiting in temperatures topping 38C (100.4F) for another C-130 to fly them to Cebu.  The only local transport available was a tricycle – a motorcycle with a sidecar. The driver said the price of petrol had soared from 50 pesos (70p) to 200 pesos. Most of the tricycles had been damaged in the storm, he explained, so there were few drivers plying the route anymore.  There is only one, badly damaged road into Tacloban. With the number of aid trucks trying to get in – and the government's 72-hour limit that each truck is allowed to stay there – the road is choked with slow-moving traffic.  What really struck me was that despite it being two weeks since the typhoon hit, the city remained at a near standstill. People milled around aimlessly; a mother breastfeeding her baby against the backdrop of a damaged house stared blankly into the distance. Piles of litter and rubble remained uncollected, and almost all of the houses had their roofs torn away.  Tacloban feels eerie, and the stench is overpowering. I saw three bodybags on the roadside. The unmistakable smell of death struck us as we passed. When we came to an old bridge, the driver explained it was where many dead bodies had been recovered. What were these people doing when Haiyan struck? Walking? Talking with friends?  The Tacloban I saw after typhoon Haiyan bore no resemblance to the city I once knew. As a fellow passenger on the C-130 had explained, many people heard the typhoon warning but underestimated its strength. Tacloban residents expected the storm to be more powerful than usual, but not a combination of a hurricane, tsunami and typhoon. Who could predict that?  Before the city was devastated by the superstorm, Tacloban was fast growing and one of the most urbanised part of the eastern Visayas islands. But when Haiyan struck, those developments were smashed to pieces.
Cecil Laguardia: In her second instalment, the Filipino aid worker describes the impact of typhoon Haiyan and the subsequent relief effort