People in Tacloban have suffered a terrible loss

The normal thing to do when you are flying into a new city and you have a window seat on the plane is to look out at landmarks or the layout of the place your visiting. But earlier today there were sharp intakes of breath as we came in to land and they weren’t from nervous fliers. They were caused by what we could see down below.

I wasn’t making my weekly commute from Glasgow to London but coming into Tacloban, the area of the Philippines worst affected by the typhoon.

Three weeks on, three weeks after the world’s best NGOs and aid departments began working with local communities to put this city back together, there is no mistaking what has gone before.

Under a regular barrage of natural disasters, the Filipino people are famed for the their resilience. But as we taxi through the city en route to the Cafod and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) HQ, the sense of calm masks a stark truth. People in Tacloban have suffered a terrible loss. Loved ones gone, homes destroyed and livelihoods taken away.

Part of what holds the country together in times like this are the Barangay leaders – a network of elected neighbourhood representatives who take charge when disaster strikes. Our hosts are rightly proud of their deep and long history with the Philippines, and their enhanced ability to empower and work alongside local people as partners shines through in the way they put these community leaders in control.

In Camire the Barangay leader works with Cafod and CRS to help organise a UK funded Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) distribution centre, whilst in Cogon, the same arrangement helped set up a ‘cash for work’ programme, giving unemployed locals the opportunity to clear the debris from their streets in return for a government prescribed minimum wage.

At times like this it’s vital that the local economy gets the boost it needs by getting local people get back to work as quickly as possible. These schemes help communities in desperate need of jobs and money do just that. The influx of cash they provide help get markets moving again to motor local communities back towards normality. Aid helps get that going but its paid work that sustains it.

But make no mistake, this is no ordinary clean up operation – almost a month after the Typhoon hit 50 bodies a day are still being pulled out the wreckage.

And given the seemingly endless array of timber and metal strewn across roads over fileds and even up trees, it’s no surprise.

Part of the reason for such absolute destruction comes from the men clearing metre high waste from the roadside. They talk of ‘the tsunami’ not the typhoon. When Haiyan hit, it wasn’t just the strength of the wind but the wall of water that did the damage and caused most of the death.

And as arable land is submerged there is a real risk of sea salt making land unusable. It is too early to tell how big a problem this will be, but with the harvest due in January there is no time to waste.

That’s not the only threat to farming either. It might seem like a trivial point initially but the ground is littered with coconuts and that is a huge problem. The fate of Leyte’s coconut trees is symbolic of the problem here. Once a vital cash crop, now the whole island is littered by dead and dying trees – beheaded and ripped apart by the storm. Each decaying tree represents a lost source of income, and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of them.

The loss of income is all around, but the loss of life in inescapable. As we began our day with Cafod with a visit to a sports field in Tanuan. the local priest pointed to a patch of disturbed turf no bigger than a penalty box on a football field. He told us it was now a mass grave; home to 1,000 bodies in a vast unmarked grave.

A terrifying number, but each an individual tragedy – brought home at the end of our day. This is a religious nation; 70% of the population are Catholic and so its natural that people want to show us the damage done to their three month old cathedral renovation. Its a very short visit because as we arrive a small but dignified funeral procession arrives. Tacloban will be burying their dead for some time to come.

Now, the aid workers are working with local communities to pick up the pieces. Long after the cameras are gone they will still be here. Giving up their Christmasses, missing new year and staying in the most cramped and uncomfortable conditions imaginable.

The people of this island have been struck with terrible fortune again, they need the best help in the world, the one saving grace is that they have it – and they‘ll need it for a long time to come. If you want to support them and you haven’t already done so you can give to the DEC appeal here.

Jim Murphy is the Shadow Secretary of State for International Development