TYPHOON HAIYAN

CORPSES hang from trees, are scattered on sidewalks and buried in flattened buildings. These are some of the 10,000 people believed killed in one Philippine city alone by ferocious Typhoon Haiyan that washed away homes and buildings with powerful winds and giant waves. 
 
Officials project the death toll could climb even higher when emergency crews reach parts that have been cut off by flooding and landslides.

As the scale of devastation from one of the worst storms ever recorded becomes clear, the downgraded Category One storm has hit the northeast coastal Quang Ninh Province in Vietnam, packing sustained winds of 120km/h and gusts of 150km/h.

Survivors in the worst hit areas of Tacloban, Leyte, have started scavenging to stay alive.

One survivor in Leyte, Jenny Chu, said the scenes around her were "like a movie".

"People are walking like zombies looking for food.

"Everything is gone. Our house is like a skeleton and we are running out of food and water. We are looking for food everywhere," she said.

Looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water as the government began relief efforts and international aid operations got underway.

"Tacloban is totally destroyed. Some people are losing their minds from hunger or from losing their families," high school teacher Andrew Pomeda, 36, said as he told Sky News  of the increasing desperation of survivors.

"People are becoming violent. They are looting business establishments, the malls, just to find food, rice and milk. I am afraid that in one week, people will be killing from hunger."

"It's like the end of the world," said Nancy Chang, who walked for hours through debris to evacuate from Tacloban City.

Lynette Lim, the Asia communications manager for Save the Children, arrived in Tacloban with aid workers to assess the damage.

"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," she told the Telegraph.co.uk.

"There were trees and electrical poles strewn across the road and corrugated iron roofing that had been ripped off houses."

One Australian has died in the devastation that has reportedly affected up to 4.3 million. Sydney former priest Kevin Lee, who helped blow the whistle on child sex abuse within the Catholic Church, perished as he went for his daily swim.

Mr Lee had been living in the Philippines with his wife Josefina and baby Michelle, The Daily Telegraph reported.

A Melbourne family are also searching for details regarding their missing daughter, Maiko "Michelle'' Reimann, who was last heard from in the Philippines, telling friends she had found paradise and "may never leave".

Michelle's father, Werner Reimann, said he was desperately hoping to hear from his 28-year-old daughter since he received a text just before Typhoon Haiyan hit, The Herald Sun reported.

Even in a nation regularly beset by earthquakes, volcanoes and tropical storms, Typhoon Haiyan appears to be the deadliest natural disaster on record.

Haiyan hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippines on Friday and quickly barrelled across its central islands, packing winds of 235km/h that gusted to 275km/h, and a storm surge of 6 metres.

Its sustained winds weakened to 133km/h as it crossed the South China Sea before approaching northern Vietnam, where it was forecast to hit land early this morning. Authorities have evacuated hundreds of thousands of people.

Hardest hit in the Philippines was Leyte Island, where officials said there may be 10,000 dead in the provincial capital of Tacloban alone. Reports also trickled in from elsewhere on the island, as well as from neighbouring islands, indicating hundreds more deaths, although it will be days before the full extent of the storm can be assessed.

"On the way to the airport we saw many bodies along the street," said Philippine-born Australian Mila Ward, 53, who was waiting at the Tacloban airport to catch a military flight back to Manila, about 580 kilometres to the northwest.

"They were covered with just anything - tarpaulin, roofing sheets, cardboard." She said she passed "well over 100" bodies.

In one part of Tacloban, a ship had been pushed ashore and sat amid damaged homes.

Haiyan inflicted serious damage to at least six of the archipelago's more than 7,000 islands, with Leyte, neighbouring Samar Island, and the northern part of Cebu appearing to bear the brunt of the storm. About 4 million people were affected by the storm, the national disaster agency said.

On Leyte, regional Police Chief Elmer Soria said the provincial governor had told him there were about 10,000 deaths there, primarily from drowning and collapsed buildings. Most were in Tacloban, a city of about 200,000 that is the biggest on the island.

One Tacloban resident said he and others took refuge inside a Jeep, but the vehicle was picked up by a surging wall of water.

"The water was as high as a coconut tree," said 44-year-old Sandy Torotoro, a bicycle taxi driver who lives near the airport with his wife and 8-year-old daughter. "I got out of the Jeep and I was swept away by the rampaging water with logs, trees and our house, which was ripped off from its mooring.

"When we were being swept by the water, many people were floating and raising their hands and yelling for help. But what can we do? We also needed to be helped," Torotoro said.

In Torotoro's village, bodies were strewn along the muddy main road as now-homeless residents huddled with the few possessions they managed to save. The road was lined with toppled trees.

On Samar, Leo Dacaynos of the provincial disaster office said 300 people were confirmed dead in one town and another 2,000 were missing, with some towns yet to be reached by rescuers. He pleaded for food and water, adding that power was out and there was no mobile phone signal, making communication possible only by radio.

Reports from other affected islands indicated dozens, perhaps hundreds more deaths.

Video from Eastern Samar province's Guiuan township - the first area where the typhoon made landfall - showed a trail of devastation. Many houses have been flattened and roads are strewn with debris and uprooted trees.

"I have no house, I have no clothes. I don't know how I will restart my life, I am so confused," an unidentified woman said, crying. "I don't know what happened to us. We are appealing for help. Whoever has a good heart, I appeal to you - please help Guiuan."

The Philippine National Red Cross said its efforts were hampered by looters, including some who attacked trucks of food and other relief supplies it was shipping to Tacloban from the southern port of Davao.

Tacloban's two largest malls and grocery stores were looted, and police guarded a fuel depot. About 200 police officers were sent into Tacloban to restore law and order.

With other rampant looting reported, President Benigno Aquino III said he was considering declaring a state of emergency or martial law in Tacloban. A state of emergency usually includes curfews, price and food supply controls, military or police checkpoints and increased security patrols.

The massive casualties occurred even though the government had evacuated nearly 800,000 people ahead of the typhoon.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel directed the Pacific Command to deploy ships and aircraft to support search-and-rescue operations and fly in emergency supplies.

The United Nations said relief operations have begun but that access remained a challenge because some areas are still cut off.

The Philippines is annually buffeted by tropical storms and typhoons, which are called hurricanes and cyclones elsewhere. The nation is in the north-western Pacific, right in the path of the world's No. 1 typhoon generator, according to meteorologists. The archipelago's exposed eastern seaboard often bears the brunt.

Even by the standards of the Philippines, however, Haiyan is a catastrophe of epic proportions and has shocked the impoverished and densely populated nation of 96 million people. Its winds were among the strongest ever recorded, and it appears to have killed many more people than the previous deadliest Philippine storm, Thelma, in which about 5,100 people died in the central Philippines in 1991.

The country's deadliest disaster on record was the 1976 magnitude-7.9 earthquake that triggered a tsunami in the Moro Gulf in the southern Philippines, killing 5,791 people.

"The devastation is ... I don't have the words for it," Philippines Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said. "It's really horrific. It's a great human tragedy."