Potential SHTF scenarios & tinfoil hat thread (Please read post 1)

“The Special Action Force and the PNP Chief Alan Purisima arrived yesterday afternoon to work with the military and the local police on the ground to address the looting. We see this as a sign of desperation because warehouses and groceries were overwhelmed by the people who are in need,” Romualdez said.

PNP is the Philippine National Police. There has been a flooding of donations for the victims of Yolanda, but the government and private organizations are having a hard time in dispensing the aid because of the destruction of roads, bridges and airports brought by Yolanda—the strongest typhoon recorded in the word for 2013.

Romualdez then disclosed that aside from looting, there has been an incident where a Red Cross caravan was hijacked by the people still reeling the wrath of Yolanda which left Leyte, as well as Eastern Samar, Capiz, Iloilo and some parts of Palawan. in tatters.

“We could understand for the desperation for the relief, but the order should be restored. There are those who are taking advantage of the situation, taking away appliances,” Romualdez added.

But Gonzales-Romualdez argued that the public should not mistake the people of Tacloban City for thieves just because of the looting incidents, saying that the people there would just want to protect their families from harm.

“The people in our City aren’t thieves. They just want the best for their families, give them something to eat. They won’t kill or hurt anybody. They just want what is good for their families,” Gonzales-Romualdez, the wife of Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez, said in closing.

Romualdez’s office is providing rice, juice, bottled water and sardines to the typhoon Yolanda victims.

"There is some aid being delivered, but we have to go all the way into Bogo City to get it," he says, a return journey of some 25 miles. "We have no fuel, we have no money, our water pumps are broken, so everything costs."

Water from the town costs 30 pesos, he explains, but as he earns only 60 pesos a day as a cutter in the neighbouring sugar cane plantation, neither he – nor his neighbours – have the funds to support his family in this time of crisis.

Dean Smith, an Australian who has been living with his family near Palo, Leyte province, for the last five years, told the Guardian that he waited eight hours to be able to get one of the first commercial flights out of Tacloban to Cebu. On the way to the airport he said he saw "horrifying things that I know I have seen but my brain hasn't processed yet".

He described scenes of chaos in the city centre, where police were stealing money from the local cashpoints, people in cars were refusing to drive the injured to get help, and the bloated body of a man floating in dirty water was being gnawed at by a dog.

"What people have gone through, what they have seen – there is going to be a lot of post-traumatic stress after this event I assure you," he said shakily. "No one has ever seen anything like this."

Having arrived on Tuesday in Cebu, Smith was planning to stock up on food, medicine and water and take it back to his Palo home, where his wife, six children, a 92-year-old grandmother and a pregnant nanny were all desperately awaiting supplies. He departed for Tacloban early on Wednesday morning.