0 -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com breaking news, the first look at what a super typhoon can do to a country of people. it's called typhoon hyiyan. from or bit looks terrifying. it cut directly across the middle of the island nation. the islands taking severe hits. look at that monster storm. we got a correspondent in the city tacloban. we haven't heard from him since the storm hit. we've been reportedly trying to get in contact with him and can't. news organizations, aid organizations, families trying to reach loved ones, none it seems can establish contact. so there is much we do not yet know at this hour, especially about how many were killed or hurt in the typhoon, the confirmed number right now is small but looking at pictures of the storm coming ashore, it's hard to imagine that number won't rise. >> oh my god, wow, wow, oh, no. >> this is a look inside perhaps one of the strongest storms in recorded history. >> oh my god. >> super typhoon haiyan made a direct hit. >> it slammed at 4:30 in the morning with winds at 195 miles per hour and guests at 235 an hour. that's higher than the winds of hurricane sandy and katrina combined. the powerful storm plowed through the island leaving homes and buildings destroyed. government officials say many devastated areas will be uninhabitable for months. >> the country's president says they are facing a problem. >> reporter: this was in the direct path of the storm. this reporter was forced inside as the storm barrelled in and watched the street below him become a flood zone. water from the storm as high as 10 feet in some areas, two barges near the city of bahol were left stranded. crew members abandoned ship by jumping into the turning water trying to scramble back to land. as of now, one of the crew remains missing. the typhoon came with warning. 125,000 people seeked shelters and in some places the cleanup has begun but aid workers haven't been able to each some of the hardest hit areas. as we said, it is as these things are always still a very fluid situation. that said, i want to try to get a read on what is happening on the ground starting with paula hancox in manila. what damage has this caused? >> reporter: there is extensive flooding and debris floating in the water going down the streets of the cities, as though they are rivers. we know there is extensive damage and houses damaged. we just don't know how wad it is, though. the sheer scale of the super typhoon means there is so much area to cover and it's just become light here. the military planes are just about to take off and will go and fly over the area to get the first aerial survey how bad it is and also to see exactly who needs help, how they can get the aid to them and if they can land in the area, of course. they don't know if the landing strips and helicopter pads will be flooded, as well and if they have to i'm pro vice? >> how long until they get a sense of the overview? >> reporter: well, they are not giving us any kind of sense. i would guess it would be a day or two before we know just how bad it is. certainly, the initial flights are going to be going over in the next couple hours. we know some aid agencies have started their long journeys down to the area from manila furtherer south in central philippines, which has been hit hard. the red cross for one, said they are going down with aid but believe it will take 18 hours to reach some of the hardest hit areas. they do have people on the ground. they planned ahead. this is not the first typhoon this country has seen, that's for sure and they say they have some aid with them. but of course, they have no communications with the people on the ground. so it's difficult to coordinate and extremely difficult to know how bad it is. >> the country is used to typhoons but never seen anything this strong, correct? >> reporter: no, absolutely not, and it seems as though the whole world has never seen anything this strong. this is above and beyond anything the philippines would certainly be used to. the hope is that people actually heeded the warnings and they actually listened to the president when he went on air and said this is a very real danger. there is a desperate hope people listened and people in low lying areas moved inland and those who live on the coast moved away, because we've seen footage of the storm surge and we've seen houses being carried away. so we certainly hope that people listened to those warnings and of course, some of these houses are flimsy, poor structure houses. typhoon haiyan is still on the move and still deadly. chad myers tracking the storm. put it in perspective, how devastating and big is it? >> it's bigger than anything we've seen in america, anderson. it's the wind force of 195 mile per hour storm, knocked everything down, tore trees out of the ground. if trees are there, it ripped bark off. it's a 20-mile wide f 4 tornado across the country. we don't have the worst pictures. we may not get them for days. this will take a long time to clean up. there is a bowling ball that rolled through the islands you talked about and everything got knocked out with the wind. the wind also generated a huge wave, a huge storm surge. i can see 40 or 50 feet coming into some of these towns and cities you're talking about. there is damage everywhere and we can't get a handle on it because we've never seen damage from 195-mile per hour wind in a hurricane, only in a tornado. >> particularly on an island where structures are not that well made we're talking about all variety, all manner of structures. the storm is dangerous and heading where, vietnam? >> vietnam. it's back out into the ocean and as it gets into the warm water, it may actually stay fairly strong. by tomorrow thinking category four or equal to what is a category four hurricane. they still call it typhoon. no longer a super typhoon because it's not above 150 anymore, it's 145, like we'll split hairs at 145. making landfall somewhere close to danang. can you explain where you are and what you have been seeing and hearing? >> reporter: yeah, we're on the island on the central islands of the philippines. we're here because of the earthquake that came through about three weeks ago. so people were severely damaged over 34,000 homes destroyed as the typhoon came through, most of those people were living in temporary shelters or under tarpaulins. we had them moving into whatever hard shelters did exist. this island got massive amounts of rain over the 24 hour period. we've seen a lot of flooding. there's reports of land slides. we've got houses damaged and in addition to that so many temporary shelters have been blown away in the wind. >> did people have a place to go, a place to evacuate, too? >> it depended where they were. there were definitely some schools that were not totally destroyed during the earthquake. there were some homes that survived, but it was definitely working together to get people into the hard shelters. >> do you have any sense of how many people were actually in shelters? >> we don't. we don't have those numbers. >> all right. and in terms of where you are compared to like tacloban, how far are you? >> reporter: we're just west, so we were on the outside edge definitely on the outside edge of the main storm surge. >> so being on the outside edge, how do they compare to storms you have been through in the past or seen? is it -- was it -- how did it compare? >> reporter: it -- you know, it was very, very substantial storm. a lot of wind, obviously. a lot of wind damage and huge amounts of rain. it basically just -- inondation with rain. >> do you have people in the areas of the direct path of the storm? if so, have you been able to contact them? >> reporter: we have a four-person team moving up into that area but not in it during the storm. >> how able are they to get there? transportation is difficult. there is a lot of flooding, a lot of debris around. >> reporter: right, where we are, it's a lot of downed trees, a lot of flooding. it's very slow to move around the island. it now light here so people are starting to clear out the roads and get the transportation lines open. >> what is the biggest priority right now in terms of aid of relief? >> reporter: relief from the earthquake was really temporary shelter. that's not switched to typhoon relief, and that's a combination of shelter and water at this point. >> well mark dyer, i appreciate you talking with us. again, we're trying to gather as much information as we can. we'll check in with mark and our other people in the region. again, we're trying to reestablish or establish contact with the correspondent who was in tacloban. they have satellite communication but we can't establish contact with them nor can aid organizations establish contact with their people, which is extremely worrying. tweet me at anderson cooper. we'll continue to try to get more information on the ground next and throughout the hour and updates from chad myers on the still powerful, still deadly storm. gulf, bp had two big goal: help the gulf recover and learn from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. i can tell you - safety is at the heart of everything we do. we've added cutting-edge technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a state-of-the-art monitoring center, where experts watch over all drilling activity twenty-four-seven. and we're sharing what we've learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. our commitment has never been stronger. customer erin swenson ordebut they didn't fit.line customer's not happy, i'm not happy. sales go down, i'm not happy. merch comes back, i'm not happy. use ups. they make returns easy. unhappy customer becomes happy customer. then, repeat customer. easy returns, i'm happy. repeat customers, i'm happy. sales go up, i'm happy. i ordered another pair. i'm happy. 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