Headed for Tacloban

Our team of four have all arrived in Manila and we head to Tacloban tomorrow. Myself and Joe Harrison from Direct Relief, Dr. Doug Gross from UC Davis, and Jodie Willard our intrepid photographer, are packed and ready to go after getting geared out tonight with tents and water and food rations.

The plan is to set up camp next to the airport with Team Rubicon, the group of military veterans we've worked with in previous disasters, and then make our way to Tacloban City, about 13kms from the airport. The word is that while food and water and medicine are still hard to come by (a local official said that the first resident died from hunger today) transport around the city is even harder. We're hoping to catch a ride with the US Military or the Red Cross, who we've already provided a large amount of medical supplies over the last 10 days.

It seems that while aid supplies are starting to arrive into the area, they still are having great difficulty getting it out to the local populations. Truck drivers have said they don't want to drive across the island because of looting so there's scenes of helicopters just dropping materials from the sky. We are going to try to make our way to the Divine Word Hospital who have been out of supplies for 7 days but still have patients coming in the doors and not leaving because they have nowhere else to go.

Yesterday we had some great meetings with some amazing folks and made a rough outline of the plan for the week. Information is still hard to come by but we should know a lot more after tomorrow. All I can say for sure is that everyone we've met has been extremely helpful and overly gracious to us. These events always have the strange feeling of combining an awful tragedy with the best that people have to offer.