Hurricane Odile, which slammed into Mexico’s Baja California as a major Category 4 hurricane, is opening the door for criminals and looters to ransack villages devastated by the storm.
Officials say that 135 people have been injured from the storm, and no one has been killed, but the major problem has been power outages and looting from stores left unprotected in the wake of evacuations.
Police say that looters have appeared to focus on electronic and higher end stores, stealing televisions, stereo equipment and other high event devices. Grocery stores have also been cleaned out with everything taken from Coca-Cola to potato chips to pancake mix.
Over 240,000 residents of the region are without power after most of the utility poles in the region were snapped off by the storm. The Federal Electricity Commission says that 92 percent of the people living in Baja California are without power.
Officials say that without power, it will be very hard to control the looting of vacated homes and businesses.
Just five days after Super Typhoon Haiyan ripped through the Philippines, panic is beginning to set in among residents of Tacloban and other destroyed villages.
Eight people were crushed to death when a crowd stormed a rice warehouse near Tacloban. More than 100,000 bags of rice were stolen by the mob before police and military troops were able to quell the riot.
Residents in parts of Tacloban were also digging up underground pipes and smashing them open to find water.
The official death toll continues to climb and stood at 2,275 as of Thursday morning. United Nations workers on the ground are expecting the total to climb significantly despite the Philippine president announcing that only a few thousand likely died in the storm rather than earlier estimates of tens of thousands.
U.S. military personnel have been evacuating people from Tacloban to Manila for medical treatment. Soldiers reported seeing roads with bodies lined up for miles awaiting the government to pick them up for burial.
The mayor of Typhoon destroyed Tacloban is telling residents to flee the destroyed city.
Mayor Alfred Romualdez told residents to leave after gunmen firing on the convoy stopped the city’s first attempt at a mass burial. The bodies had to be returned to a gathering place by the remnants of city hall where the stench was overwhelming.
The mayor said that the city does not have enough trucks and heavy equipment to distribute relief that is piling up at the Tacloban airport.
“I have to decide at every meeting which is more important, relief goods or picking up cadavers,” Romualdez said.
Government officials say the Philippine military is stretched so thin it’s impossible to provide security for cities like Tacloban.
The massive devastation in the Philippines and the overwhelmed police & military officials on the islands is leading to conditions of lawlessness and looting.
Officials reported shooting dead two men who were part of a gang that tried to raid and hijack a series of trucks carrying relief supplies. In several towns, shopkeepers are using deadly force and working in around-the-clock shifts to provide armed security for their stores to prevent looting.
Prisoners from local jails were released and told to try and save themselves from the storm and police have made no effort to recapture them.
The Philippine government has sent in columns of armored vehicles to Tacloban and other ruined communities in an attempt to stop the looting and violence. However, without bringing clean water and food to the same regions, officials say it’s likely the actions of desperate people will magnify an already bad situation.
One store owner told the Daily Mail they cannot understand why someone would steal televisions and washing machines when it’s harder to find food or water.
The death toll from Super Typhoon Haiyan continues to climb as makeshift mortuaries are being set up outside buildings that remain mostly intact. Police and soldiers tell various media outlets that they are finding entire towns wiped out because of the storm surges and wind gusts of the typhoon.
The governor of Samar province said the entire town of Basey was gone and its 2,000 residents are missing.
And complicating efforts is Tropical Storm Zoraida is now hovering over the area impacted by Haiyan dumping more rain and causing more flooding. Search and rescue efforts were suspended for hours Tuesday because of heavy rains.
One official told the Daily Mail “two out of every five dead are children.”
The town of Baco, a city of 35,000, remains 80% underwater and officials cannot even access most of the community to search for victims.
Health officials are already raising the alarm over disease as many residents are beginning to show signs of dysentery. The officials lament the lack of clean water in the region and the inability to get equipment to clean water to the villages hit hardest by the storm.