Cape Town - The last thing he told his wife to do was board up the windows and stay inside. But two days later Cape Town man Johan Buxmann has still not heard from her.
Some South Africans in the Philippines may have been spared by the devastating “super typhoon” Haiyan - but relatives of others are still anxiously waiting for news. Buxmann was among those on Monday.
Buxmann, an air traffic controller, originally from Wellington, had left his wife Manilyn and their young daughter behind in the Philippines to work in the United Arab Emirates.
And now he is sitting helpless in the Middle East country after the typhoon tore through the Philippines at the weekend.
“I’m seriously worried, but I’m powerless. I will not even try the embassy in Manila as I know that will be useless,” he said.
The Filipino government has not confirmed officials’ estimates over the weekend of 10 000 deaths, but the toll from Haiyan, one of the strongest typhoons yet 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 UN 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 had no access to food, water or medicine, the UN said on Monday.
In an e-mail, Buxmann recounted his last phone call to his wife.
“She said the wind was very strong, but I knew and told her that was nothing compared to what is coming.”
He said the eye of the storm had missed their home in Bancal, Western Visayas, by about 50km.
But with many villages outside the eye being flattened by mudslides and landfalls, Buxmann is still concerned.
“I would jump on a plane over there but what can that help if all transport and communications are so badly affected?”
On his Facebook page, he wrote: “Still no news from my two girls in the Philippines, cellphone networks are slowly getting restored but not in our area yet. So frustrating!”
Another South African is counting himself lucky that he decided to settle in the northern part of the country.
Iain Thysse, who moved from Southbroom in KwaZulu-Natal to the mountain region of Baguio, said they had some mild wind and rain at the weekend.
“The further south you go the worse it gets. I have some friends who live on the Malapascua Island who had a direct hit.”
Thysse is trying to arrange a trip to deliver medication and provide relief for the victims of the storm.
The effort is being led by a local resort, Evolution Diving, which was hit hard by the storm. Thysse said a lot of people were mobilising from all over the world to provide assistance, but the scale of the damage was making it difficult to provide relief.
“The infrastructure here isn’t great at the best of times. During times of disaster is in non-existent.”
He said in 2006, when a category four storm hit the country, power in many areas was down for almost three months.
That storm, while at the high end of the spectrum, still pales in comparison to this weekend’s - which has been classed as a category five.
All South Africans such as Buxmann can do now is wait for a phone call or an e-mail.
The Department of International Relations and Co-operation said on Monday that since the typhoon hit on Friday, it had been in constant contact with its embassy in Manila.
By publication time on Monday, no South Africans had been reported killed or missing, spokesman Clayson Monyela told the Cape Argus.
Cape Argus