Christmas in mud as rain pelts Philippine disaster zone

Terra Daily via AFP: Survivors of the Philippines' deadliest typhoon spent a gloomy Christmas Day surrounded by mud Wednesday as heavy rain drove many inside their flimsy shelters, dampening efforts at holiday cheer in the deeply devout nation.

Groups of children in plastic raincoats braved the incessant rain in the devastated central city of Tacloban, knocking on doors in trick-or-treat fashion and beseeching pedestrians for candies, coins and other Christmas presents.

But housewife Susan Scala sat glumly under a white tarpaulin in one of Tacloban's many tent cities for those made homeless by Super Typhoon Haiyan. At a time when her family should be celebrating, all she could think of was her missing husband.

"Even if it's not Christmas I don't stop thinking about him," the mother of five said of her husband Oscar, a telephone utility worker believed lost at sea when giant waves whipped up by the November 8 storm swept away homes in the city's San Jose slum.

Like many of the city's survivors, the miserable weather made Scala nervous. "This incessant rain is scary. It reminds me of what happened (during the typhoon)," the 53-year-old said.

Haiyan left more than 6,100 people dead and nearly 2,000 others missing, many of them from Tacloban and nearby towns, in the storm-prone country's deadliest typhoon disaster....

The aftermath of Haiyan in Tacloban, shot by Trocaire, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license