Survivors Struggle Among Corpses; 3,621 Dead, 1,100 Plus Missing In Typhoon
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: In the Philippines, survival is a battle waged every second. A wife keeps her husband alive by manually pumping air into his lungs at a Tacloban hospital. His leg was amputated days ago. The hospital doesn't have electricity and that's a week after Typhoon Haiyan slammed in. The husband is one more than 12,000 people injured, so many of them clinging to their lives.</s>ROSA FLORES, CNN ANCHOR: It's just such a tough story, folks. Crews are still collecting bodies from the streets and the rubble, and putting them in trucks. Many corpses are headed for mass graves. The death toll now stands at 3,621. The collection trucks have yet to reach some of the parts of the city. A grief-stricken mother knows three of her children are dead. She's keeping their bodies in luggage on the street. CNN's Anderson Cooper talked to survivors keeping watch over relatives' bodies.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, CNN "AC 360" (voice-over): A body covered in a sheet, another in a makeshift coffin. There are flowers but no names. No one seems to notice anymore. To survive, the living are told to forget the past, forget the dead, but that of course is impossible. Juan Merto tries to stay busy. His child is missing. He still doesn't use the word dead. Juan's father lays in their shack. His back injured in the storm. His family has suffered more than anyone ever should. (on camera): How high was the water? The water was as tall as that tree? (voice-over) Janet's two children slipped from her grasp and drowned. I did all that I could, she says, but I let them go. What can you say in the face of such sadness? Jovelyn Taniaga is trying to keep busy. She's collected old dishes and is cleaning them up. We first met her on Tuesday. She showed us the bodies of three of her children. She placed them in a piece of luggage under a sheet. She was searching for her three other children. (on camera): Has anyone come to help you? (voice-over): I really want to see them, she says, even if it's just their bodies. Two days later, and she still hasn't found her three other children. (on camera): Has there been any help since we saw you? (voice-over): None, she says. My children are decomposing. (on camera): They're still there? (voice-over): No help, no local government officials, no city officials, says her father. Nobody is showing themselves. His injured son, Jericho, sits silently listening. Jericho's mother is dead. So is his aunt and nine of his cousins. In a daze, he asked me, when is my mother coming back? He never ever says she's missing. He still thinks she will come back. We didn't know there was a tsunami, he says. We thought it was just a storm. (on camera): You didn't know there would be this storm surge of water? (voice-over): We have been through so many storms, he said, there were many times before our house gets destroyed and we just hide behind a tree, but there's no water. It's just wind. It's the water that killed us. (on camera): If somebody had told you it would be like a tsunami, you would have left? (voice-over): Yes. He says. We would have left right away. Jericho wants to leave now on a C-130, the kind of plane he sees every day overhead, flying evacuees to Manila. His father tells him they have to stay. They have no money, just each other. That's all that's left. (on camera): It's been almost a week since the typhoon hit. And the initial adrenaline of the storm and its aftermath has faded and the grim reality of what life is now has taken its place. People are trying to kind of rebuild is too strong a word, just trying to survive as best they can. People have hung up some washing on a shack that they put together out of scraps of corrugated tin that they have been able to salvage. You see women doing washing of plates and clothing, whatever they can find. Whatever they can find that they used to own that's been spread out throughout all this area. You see people walking around, trying to find their possessions, trying to find family photographs and plates and all the little things that make up a person's life. (voice-over): Survival is still a struggle, for some more than most. Two days ago, we met this man sharing rice with his neighbors. He desperately wanted to call his mother in Manila to let him know he was alive, but his wife and two of his three children were not. We dialed her number for him on the satellite phone. They're all gone. They're gone, he says. They're all gone. We're the only ones who survived. Just the two of us survived, he says. I don't know why this happened to me. We found him again today. How are you? His grief is still overwhelming. He can't stop thinking about seeing his family drown in the storm. The first one that I saw was my youngest, he says. She fainted and then she drowned. The water was so fast and then my wife, when I tried to grab her, I missed her, and then she drowned. And then I never saw her again. He admits he often thinks of killing himself, but hasn't because he still has one child who needs him. It's like I don't want to live anymore because of what happened to my family, he tells me. All of us here lost our loved ones, but all I'm saying is people have different ways of dealing with how we feel, and in my case, I can't handle it. In Tacloban, there is no time for grief, little chance for comfort. Between death and life, the line is thin. Sometimes there's no line at all. Anderson Cooper, CNN, Tacloban.</s>FLORES: Tough pictures and tough stories. Tonight, Anderson shows you an emotional reunion in the Philippines. A family separated by the typhoon comes together again. As you know, "AC360" airs tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN. Tens of thousands of people are homeless. Some hungry people surviving on coconut juice, and we know there's a lot of very generous people out there. If you want to help typhoon survivors, go to cnn.com/spec cnn.com/specials/impactyourworld for more information.</s>BERMAN: A terrific resource. Coming up for us next, it's the middle of the night. A woman knocks on the door of a homeowner. Moments later, he shoots and kills her. As protesters get impatient, prosecutors are revealing whether the homeowner will be charged. Also, will the woman's toxicology results play a role in the case? Plus, for the first time, we're seeing video from inside the mall where a man terrorized shoppers and fired shots before killing himself. We'll show you more of these pictures coming up next.