The death toll from Typhoon Haiyan is climbing as rescuers reach more areas across the Philippines devastated by the storm. Edwin Lacierda, the Philippines presidential spokesman, tells the WSJ the country needs more help from abroad to cope with the loss and destruction.
TACLOBAN, Philippines—The Philippines Tuesday wrestled with damage wrought by supertyphoon Haiyan, taking solace from the outpouring of international aid but also daunted by the challenge of rebuilding the ravaged region.
The United Nations launched an appeal for $301 million to carry out a plan to bring back the areas devastated by the storm within six months, particularly the hard-hit islands of Samar and Leyte in the central Philippines.
That goal won't be easy given that Haiyan was the strongest typhoon to hit the country in two decades, with wind forces three times as powerful as Hurricane Katrina.

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Aerial Views of the Devastation

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Flattened houses in the city of Tacloban. Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images

Typhoon Hits Philippines

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Survivors walked under a fallen electric post Sunday. Reuters

As of Tuesday, nearly three dozen countries and international organizations had pledged $54.4 million in financial aid as well as humanitarian assistance to the Southeast Asian nation, which the World Bank has called one of the most hazard-prone countries in the world.
Meanwhile, the government started to make progress in reaching places that have been inaccessible due to blocked roads, damaged infrastructure and insufficient logistics. The official death count Tuesday stood at 1,798.
Yesterday, the process of clearing the dead from the streets of Leyte's capital city of Tacloban began, though many still lay untouched, while police fished bodies from the sea, trucking them across town to lay them in the grass across from City Hall, zippered in black body bags.
On Tuesday afternoon, senior superintendent police officer Emmanuel Aranas said some 140 bodies had been retrieved. As other cities have done throughout the province, the city is preparing for a mass burial. Thousands more body bags are on the way, he said.
Some five days after the storm razed the port city of Tacloban, questions are circulating about how the city lost so many lives, given that the typhoon's path was well-predicted. Many residents cited the storm surge, with waves rising unexpectedly high, as one reason. Out of 40 bodies autopsied so far, said John Ilo, police medical and legal officer, 90% died from drowning.
The government said that nearly seven million people in 41 provinces were affected by Haiyan. Official damage estimates for agriculture alone total $87 million, with the bulk representing rice and corn. Around 71,000 hectares of farmland were impacted.
On Tuesday, the government opened an airstrip in Guiuan, a coastal town on the island of Samar that was first to feel the fury of Haiyan when it made landfall at dawn Friday.
Manuel Roxas, secretary for the interior and local governments, said the Guiuan airport will serve as a hub for distribution of relief and rescue efforts in Samar. He said some of the C-130 military cargo planes, which are being used to deliver relief supplies and transport victims seeking refuge elsewhere, will be diverted to Guiuan.
U.S. Marines also started using military cargo planes to fly supplies and personnel into Tacloban and then return with refugees to Manila.
More goods are also arriving in Leyte as the government opens land routes.
Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said that the destruction wrought by the disaster on an area that contributes 12.5% to gross domestic product could shave off as much as a full percentage point to economic growth next year, when the government targets GDP expansion of at least 6.5%. He said he is hopeful that the adverse effect on growth will be cushioned, if not offset, by the reconstruction spending.
"From a fiscal standpoint, we do have fiscal space to spend for reconstruction. The estimates are preliminary, but we need to invest significantly on infrastructure," Mr. Purisima said.
Meanwhile, additional soldiers and police deployed in Tacloban appeared to be restoring some order, minimizing the widespread looting. But evacuation centers were crowded and lacked clean drinking and bathing water.
Relief efforts were hampered further by a small storm that made landfall Tuesday about 290 miles from areas hit hard by the storm. Tropical depression Zoraida brought new rain onto the region. And a mild earthquake rattled the typhoon-hit Bohol area Tuesday, raising concerns that stronger quakes could add to the burden of relief workers.
But even as Tacloban prepared to bury hundreds in mass graves, stories of hope emerged. When Typhoon Haiyan—known locally as Yolanda—swept over Tacloban, city officials said they feared all the workers at a city office near the water line had been killed.
Marilou Nacilla, a 56-year-old social worker, was among those feared lost.
On Tuesday, though, Ms. Nacilla was compiling lists of people needing help at a temporary office opposite Tacloban City Hall, helping the relief effort to gain traction despite logistical problems and poor weather.
"My four children thought I was dead. They had no idea that I worked through the storm and moved to the new location," Ms. Nacilla said. "But on Saturday, I had a moment of intuition and felt I should let my family know everything was OK.
"So I found a man who was going to my neighborhood to let them know where I was, and I found out that they thought I was dead. It was such a shock," she said.
Ms. Nacilla and other government officials are working to restore some order to the stricken city. While she collated data about where relief supplies should be sent, staff from the Philippines' Department of Social Welfare and Development worked to maintain communications links with the rest of the country, enabling people to send emails or posts on social media to let relatives and friends know what had happened to them.
"There's a lot of demand, so we try to restrict the time to three minutes each—but that's enough time to post a Facebook status update or send a tweet," said Felino Castro, director of a communications team deployed by the Philippine government the day after the storm hit.
Tecson Lim, a Tacloban city administrator, said the city needs cutting gear and other equipment to help improve the flow of logistics into the city. "We have to all pull together on this one and keep things moving," he said.
—Te-Ping Chen contributed to this article.
Write to Cris Larano at cris.larano@wsj.com and James Hookway atjames.hookway@wsj.com