New York under curfew as looters hit luxury stores

NEW YORK, United States - New York was under a curfew that would last until early Tuesday morning, officials said, after looters raided stores in central Manhattan, targeting some of the city's top retailers.

Upmarket fashion store Michael Kors on Fifth Avenue was among the luxury outlets hit, along with Nike, Lego and electronics shops across Midtown, before the 11:00 pm to 5:00 am curfew came into effect, AFP journalists said.

Groups of young people moved from block to block around the district, usually bustling with tourists but deserted due to the coronavirus, with entire streets blocked by police.

Images from local NY1 television showed some young people running out of a Best Buy electronics store before being apprehended by the police.

Stores in the south of Manhattan suffered a similar fate, according to an AFP photographer.

The New York Times reported that the flagship Macy's department store had also been targeted by looters.

Police did not immediately confirm this, simply saying that "numerous stores were hit" and arrests made "in the hundreds" across the city.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said a lot of stores around Madison Avenue had been hit and the situation was "really not acceptable."

As a result, he said the curfew would start from 8:00 pm on Tuesday, instead of 11:00 pm.

"The city is fully under control, and overwhelmingly calm and peaceful," he nevertheless insisted on NY1.

- 'Time to go home' -

The imposition of the curfew had been announced a few hours earlier by the mayor and New York state governor Andrew Cuomo after protests and looting during the weekend -- notably in the trendy SoHo district.

The mayor tweeted late Monday that "protesters were overwhelmingly peaceful today" but that some people were out to damage property and steal.

"We support peaceful protest in this city. But right now it's time to go home," de Blasio said.

"Some people are out tonight not to protest but to destroy property and hurt others -— and those people are being arrested. Their actions are unacceptable and we won't allow them in our city."

New York, the economic capital of the United States, and around 40 other cities across the country have imposed curfews after violent protests against police brutality triggered by the death of African-American George Floyd in Minnesota.

Just after 11:00 pm, around a hundred people held a peaceful demonstration in front of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the scene of major protests in recent days, taking a knee in tribute to victims of police brutality, according to an AFP journalist.

Police observed them from a distance but did not arrest anyone despite the curfew.

While looters hit New York, in Washington, President Donald Trump said he was "dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults and the wanton destruction of property."

Mayor de Blasio, a Democrat, denounced Trump's "bellicose words" and "divisive rhetoric."

"I don't think it's a statement from the last few hours that has caused all this. I think it's what he's done for years that has contributed," he said. 

Agence France-Presse

Dinky pleads for understanding of looters

MANILA – Department of Social Welfare and Development Secretary Dinky Soliman on Tuesday said the people should not be so quick to judge survivors of typhoon "Yolanda" who have resorted to looting in order to survive.

"Ngayon lang naman tayo nagka-disaster na ganito ang naging responde ng mga tao. At para sa akin, unawain natin sila. Hindi nila inakala na ganito ang mangyayari sa kanila," Soliman told dzMM.

She added that sheer magnitude of the devastation brought by the typhoon has forced the hungry and tired survivors to resort to lawlessness.

"[Naiisip siguro nila] 'Bakit nangyari sa akin ito? Galit ako sa lahat, ang akin lang magagawa ay gumawa ng mga pagkilos na ito,'" she said.

Soliman said the most important thing now is that help is coming to the severely battered city of Tacloban in Leyte, and Guiuan in Eastern Samar.

"Ngayon ang pinakamahalagang mangyari, tuloy-tuloy ang bigay ng pagkain, dahil sa aking pagtingin, sa galit, sa frustration, sa sama ng loob, ang mga tao, masyadong heightened ang pangangailangan na ma-assure na sila ay hindi mauubusan," Soliman said, reacting to reports that some survivors were blocking vehicles carrying relief goods.

State of national calamity, curfew

President Benigno Aquino on Monday night declared a state of national calamity following the devastation caused by the typhoon.

The declaration will allow the national government to fast-track delivery of aid and basic services, particularly in typhoon-hit areas in the Visayas.

Around P18.7 billion in government funds can be used to help victims and rebuild communities, Aquino said. Some P1.1 billion in Quick Response Funds were also allotted for the DSWD and the Department of Public Works and Highways.

Over 20 countries, as well as foreign aid organizations and the private sector, are helping in the relief efforts.

To address the crime incidents plaguing badly-hit Tacloban, the Philippine government said Tuesday it had deployed armored vehicles, set up checkpoints and imposed a curfew to help end looting in the city.

Tacloban -- on the central island of Leyte -- bore the brunt of Friday's category-five storm with at least 10,000 people feared to have died there, according to the United Nations.

The devastated provincial capital -- a city of 220,000 residents -- has also seen some of the worst pillaging. Famished survivors desperate for food and medical supplies have ransacked aid convoys, hampering relief efforts.

Survivors have reported gangs stealing consumer goods including televisions and washing machines from small businesses.

Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said four Simba armored personnel carriers had been deployed to contain looting and help restore law and order, a day after hundreds of Philippine soldiers and police were sent to the city.

"We are circulating them (the Simbas) in the city to show the people, especially those with bad intentions, that the authorities have returned," Roxas told DZMM radio.

Checkpoints have been set up to stop people from mobbing relief trucks, he said.

Many resorted to looting with a charity saying that in one case, a man with a machete tried to rob aid workers who were receiving a delivery of medicine.

"The presence of policemen, military and government forces will definitely improve things (but) it will not be overnight," Roxas said, confirming reports that the Tacloban city government had imposed a curfew on residents of 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.

"It is a tool that we are using to minimize the looting and break-ins. We know some people cannot return home (during the curfew) because their homes were washed away but it is more effective against roving gangs who are looking for targets of opportunity," he said.

It is not clear where newly homeless residents are meant to go during this period.

Roxas added that the public works department had cleared at least one lane of a highway entering the city, which would speed up entry of supplies. It is hoped that incidences of looting will decrease as food relief flows to isolated areas.

Roxas said the government's three main priorities were to restore peace and order, bring in relief goods and start collecting corpses.

"Now that we have achieved number one and two, the priority is the recovery of the cadavers," he said. – with Agence France-Presse

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

'Nothing left to loot' in devastated Tacloban

TACLOBAN, Philippines - Hung outside a shattered church in the Philippine coastal city of Tacloban, on a road flanked with uncollected corpses and canyons of debris, is a handwritten sign.

It read, "We need help!"

Relief supplies are pouring into Tacloban three days after Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, turned this once-vibrant port city of 220,000 into a corpse-choked wasteland.

Tacloban city administrator Tecson Juan Lim says the death toll in this city alone "could go up to 10,000."

At least a dozen U.S. and Philippines military cargo planes arrived on Monday, with the Philippine air force saying it had flown in about 60,000 kg (66 tons) of relief supplies since Saturday. But the demand is huge and the supplies aren't reaching those who need it most.

"People are roaming around the city, looking for food and water," said Christopher Pedrosa, a government aid worker.

Aid trucks from the airport struggle to enter the city because of the stream of people and vehicles leaving it. On motorbikes, trucks or by foot, people clog the road to the airport, clutching scarves to their faces to blot out the dust and stench of bodies.

Hundreds have already left on cargo planes to the capital, Manila, or the second-biggest city of Cebu, with many more sleeping rough overnight at the wrecked airport in the hope of boarding flights in the coming days.

Reuters journalists traveled on a government aid truck which took five hours to pick up 600 bags of rice, tinned goods and milk from the airport and take it to a distribution point at City Hall. Thousands more bags were left at the airport because the truck wasn't big enough, said officials.

Pedrosa, the government aid worker, said security concerns prevented supplies from being handed out after dark.

"There might be a stampede," he said.

The aid truck was guarded by soldiers toting assault rifles. "It's risky," said Jewel Ray Marcia, a Philippine army lieutenant who led the unit.

"People are angry. They are going out of their minds."

"NOTHING LEFT TO LOOT"

The official slogan of Tacloban is "A City of Progress, Beauty and Love". But Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda, has turned that on its head, as desperation and anger grow. Residents wait with increasing impatience for a trickle of aid to become a torrent.

Earlier on Monday, said Pedrosa, soldiers fired warning shots into the air to stop people stealing fuel from a petrol station.

A heavier presence of soldiers and police on the debris-choked streets has stopped most looting, at least for now.

People were still emptying one warehouse of rice and loading it onto carts and motorcycles. No police or soldiers stopped them.

A handwritten sign pinned to a makeshift police checkpoint near a looted department store warned of an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew. Reuters was unable to confirm whether the curfew was observed or enforced.

Also cleared out is a bottling factory for beer and soft drinks. In some areas, Coca-Cola was handed out free while drinking water was impossible to find. Officials were warning residents not to drink water from wells, which were likely polluted.

But there is another reason the looting had abated.

"There is nothing left to loot," said Pedrosa.

"THERE IS NOTHING HERE"

Officials attribute the high death toll to the many people who stayed behind to protect their property and were swept away in a storm surge of water and lacerating debris.

One of them was Marivel Saraza, 39, who moved her six children further inland before Haiyan struck, but stayed behind to look after her home only a stone's throw from the sea.

She ended up battling through chest-high water to reach higher ground, while the storm surge destroyed her two-story concrete home.

"My house just dissolved in the water," she said.

Saraza now struggles to feed her children. The government gave her 2 kg (4.4 lb) of rice and a single can of sardines - barely enough for one family meal - so her husband was foraging for fruit further inland. But trees have been combed flat by the force of the wind and rice fields inundated with salt water.

Haiyan struck with a force strong enough to drown hundreds of people in a storm surge and send cars and shipping containers tumbling through neighborhoods. All that's left of the main airport building is a carcass of twisted metal.

The sea has yet to retreat from some neighborhoods and the streets are flooded. The bay is littered with half-submerged cars.

Some people are making shelters from what the water has left of their broken homes. Others, unable to find any flat ground amid the ruins, sleep on sodden mattresses on their roofs. Some 5,000 people sheltered in a stadium.

The streets empty at night, the ruins lit here and there by cooking fires, or scoped by the powerful lights of passing army trucks.

Rusty Lacambra, 42, is joining the exodus along with his wife, two sons and niece. On Monday night he hitched a lift in an army truck bound for the airport to wait with hundreds of others hoping for a free flight on a cargo plane to Manila.

"My house is destroyed," he said. "Even if you have money there is no food to buy. There is nothing here."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

'Yolanda' survivors beg for help

Death toll could rise once isolated coastal villages are reached

Roads, airports and bridges destroyed

U.S. sends Marines and sailors to help

TACLOBAN, Philippines - Dazed survivors of a super typhoon that swept through the central Philippines killing an estimated 10,000 people begged for help and scavenged for food, water and medicine on Monday, threatening to overwhelm military and rescue resources.

As President Benigno Aquino deployed hundreds of soldiers in the coastal city of Tacloban to quell looting, reports from one town showed apocalyptic scenes of destruction in another region that has not been reached by rescue workers or the armed forces.

The government has not confirmed officials' estimates over the weekend of 10,000 deaths, but the toll from Haiyan, one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded, is clearly far higher than the current official count of 255. The Armed Forces in the central Philippines on Monday reported a death toll of 942.

"The situation is bad, the devastation has been significant. In some cases the devastation has been total," Secretary to the Cabinet Rene Almendras told a news conference.

The United Nations said officials in Tacloban, which bore the brunt of the storm on Friday, had reported one mass grave of 300-500 bodies.

More than 600,000 people were displaced by the storm across the country and some have no access to food, water, or medicine, the U.N. says.

Flattened by surging waves and monster winds up to 235 mph (378 kph), Tacloban, 580 km (360 miles) southeast of Manila, was relying almost entirely for supplies and evacuation on just three military transport planes flying from nearby Cebu city.

Dozens of residents clamoured for help at the airport gates.

"Help us, help us. Where is President Aquino? We need water, we are very thirsty," shouted one woman. "When are you going to get bodies from the streets?"

Haiyan is estimated to have destroyed about 70 to 80 percent of structures in its path as it tore into the coastal provinces of Leyte and Samar. The damage to the coconut- and rice-growing region was expected to amount to more than 3 billion pesos ($69 million), Citi Research said in a report, with "massive losses" for private property.

Most of the damage and deaths were caused by huge waves that inundated towns and swept away coastal villages in scenes that officials likened to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Bodies litter the streets of the Tacloban, rotting and swelling under the hot sun and adding to the health risk.

International aid agencies said relief resources in the Philippines were stretched thin after a 7.2 magnitude quake in central Bohol province last month and displacement caused by a conflict with Muslim rebels in southern Zamboanga province.

Operations were further hampered because roads, airports and bridges had been destroyed or were covered in wreckage. Threatening to add to the crisis in the impoverished area, a tropical depression carrying heavy rain was forecast to arrive in the region as early as Tuesday.

Awelina Hadloc, the owner of a convenience store, foraged for instant noodles at a warehouse that was almost bare from looting. She said her store had been washed away by a 10-foot (3-metre) storm surge.

"It is so difficult. It is like we are starting again," said the 28-year-old. "There are no more supplies in the warehouse and the malls."

Aquino, facing one of the biggest challenges of his three-year rule, deployed 300 soldiers and police to restore order in Tacloban after looters rampaged through several stores.

Aquino, who before the storm said the government was aiming for zero casualties, has shown exasperation at conflicting official reports on damage and deaths. One TV network quoted him as telling the head of the disaster agency that he was running out of patience.

DEATH TOLL COULD CLIMB

The official death toll is likely to climb rapidly once rescuers reach remote villages along the coast, such as Guiuan, a town in eastern Samar province with a population of 40,000 that was largely destroyed.

"The only reason why we have no reports of casualties up to now is that communications systems ... are down," said Colonel John Sanchez, posting on the Armed Forces Facebook page.

About 300 people died in Samar, said an official from the provincial disaster agency. Baco, a city of 35,000 in Oriental Mindoro province, was 80 percent under water, the U.N. said.

U.S. aid groups also launched a multimillion-dollar relief campaign. An official from one group, World Vision, said there were early reports that as much as 90 percent of northern Cebu had been destroyed. An aid team from Oxfam reported "utter destruction" in the northern-most tip of Cebu.

Thirteen people were killed and dozens hurt during heavy winds and storms in Vietnam as Haiyan approached the coast, state media reported, even though it had weakened substantially after hitting the Philippines.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com