A United Nations disaster official on Saturday likens the devastation from Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines to the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people, according to dpa. Sebastian Rhodes Stampa heads a disaster assessment coordination team that arrived in Tacloban City of the hard-hit Leyte province, to prepare for humanitarian assistance. "The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami," he says. "This is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like tumbleweeds and the streets are strewn with debris." Relief operations are expected to be "extremely difficult" since roads between the airport and towns needing aid are impassable.
