11/11/2013 Newsround

Devastation and despair in the Philippines as the country's

president declares a state of national calamity and the world

discovers the scale of the damage from one of the worst storms ever.

Hi - Martin here with a special Newsround looking at the impact of

Typhoon Haiyan and the millions whose lives have been affected

forever. To the Philippines then, where the

images of devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan continue to shock the

world. It's now estimated that more than nine million people have been

affected and there's still a lot we don't know about the extent of the

damage outside of the main cities. More than 10,000 people are believed

to have been killed in just one place, Tacloban, after it was

practically wiped out. Tacloban, a city reduced to rubble

by one of the most powerful storms in history. Nobody can cope with the

level of destruction this city has experienced. You

level of destruction this city has just looks as though it has been

completely torn apart. It began last Friday when winds of up to 200 miles

per hour swept through the Philippines in South East Asia.

Typhoon Haiyan had arrived, and for many there was no escaping it. The

storm was on a level unimaginable for those of us living in the UK.

The typhoon ripped apart homes and schools, triggering landslides and

mass flooding. It's estimated that 10,000 lives were lost in Tacloban

alone. This is my house, it is totally gone, nothing there. This is

all we have, what we are wearing. That is it. Here in the city, the

airport has been destroyed. This is what's left of the shopping centre.

And row upon row of homes have simply vanished. It wasn't the wind

that did all this, it was water - an enormous four-metre storm surge

swept into the coast and flattened neighbourhoods. But out of the

wreckage, stories of survival - a five-year-old boy and his family

clung on to a tree for four hours as the water levels rose around them.

Small glimpses of hope but the true scale of the devastation is not yet

known. Many more areas are yet to be reached, many more stories yet to be

heard. Well Typhoon Haiyan has now been downgraded to a tropical storm

and is heading towards nearby Vietnam. But back in the

Philippines, aid agencies say the continued bad weather is making it

difficult to get food, water and other vital supplies to people.

Ayshah has been finding out how hard it's already proving to reach those

in need. Small amounts of aid arriving in the Philippines, but

when roads and buildings have been wiped out, how do you get it to

when roads and buildings have been where it needs to go? It is

difficult to get around at the moment. With the strength of these

winds, people described it as a jet engine blasting down on where they

lived. One of the first problems is being able to get through to people

because some mobile phones still don't work and it is difficult to

get hold of even our own staff in some places. The geography of the

country makes reaching the people affected even more difficult. It's a

series of islands and with airports and ports destroyed and seas still

choppy, getting from one place to another is hard. Even trying to

drive across the mainland has its challenges. Things are so bad in

Tacloban, it's taking more than six hours to travel the seven miles to

the airport, a journey which would normally take ten minutes. So once

aid workers get to people, what do they need? People need basic things

that we probably take for granted like clean water, food, and in some

cases we are also talking about emergency accommodation so this

means that people might move into a tent just for the next few weeks in

order to survive. In the next few days the response to Typhoon Haiyan

will be crucial in saving lives Entire communities have been left

without food, medicine and water. Now it's a race against the clock to

reach them. Well if anything you've seen in the

show today upsets you, there's loads of help and advice over on our

website. That's all for now.