After the miracle of survival comes the long, hard struggle to start again Utter devastation: Ormoc City. When Lindo Mansing heard on the radio that a large typhoon was headed towards his hilltop village overlooking the sea, he called a meeting. "I told [the villagers] to cut down any tree branches hanging over their homes and shelter in the strongest homes when the storm comes," he remembers. Typhoon Haiyan was one of the most powerful storms ever recorded when it made landfall a few kilometres from Lat-osan village on the north-west coast of the central Philippine island of Leyte, gusting to more than 300km/h. Left with nothing: Marina Pintoy, middle, with her children outside their destroyed house. Most of the 2300 villagers decided to ride out the storm. They have done so countless times before, in a country that experiences an average of 20 typhoons a year. But this time their survival was what 87-year-old Francisco Mainit, who has lived through countless storms, called a miracle. And now the villagers are trying to rebuild amid an evolving humanitarian disaster. It is a story being repeated in many villages and towns across the devastated islands. Miracle: Joel Asoque carries his blind grandfather. During the storm, Marina Pintoy, 44, huddled in her tiny three-room bamboo hut with seven of her eight children, the youngest aged four. Her husband went fishing years ago and never came home. Even before Haiyan had vented the worst of its fury, Pintoy's hut was torn apart and almost all her possessions were stripped away, including pots, pans and clothing. "We were very scared," she said. How we survived I don't know. Analie Mainit, 38, her husband, Mario Mainit, 40, their son, John Mark, who cannot speak or walk, and daughter Aliesze Marie, 9, also decided to tough it out in their bamboo house but it, too, exploded around them. They ran to a neighbour's house and pushed in under the floorboards as the house above them was blown away into the valley below. Rosalie Gamusa, 37, was in her house with her husband and three children when a huge mango tree slammed through the roof. "We were praying and praying ... that is all we could do," she said. Mercy Daguil, 26, ran with her two children to a neighbour's house as her home splintered around them. Francisco Mainit has been through too many severe storms to count, including what he remembers was a very bad one in 1968. He never saw Haiyan because he cannot walk and three years ago he became blind. But he heard its enormous roar and the shouts of terror from those around him as 200 homes in the village disappeared in the storm, which hammered the village for five hours. "This one was the worst," he said, sitting in a shelter as one of his more than 20 granddaughters spoon-fed him rice and banana. The scene after the storm was of utter devastation as far as villagers could see. Yet only one person suffered a cut and bruised head, which Francisco Mainit said was a miracle. Life has always been tough here. Villagers eke out a living growing mangoes, breadfruit and coconuts and planting rice and corn in nearby paddy fields. Now all the trees are stripped bare and most are severely damaged or destroyed. So are the rice and corn crops. The devastation is reminiscent of the destruction wrought by the 2004 Asian tsunami. Steel power poles snapped and twisted; houses were reduced to piles of twisted corrugated iron and wood. Sad, dishevelled people pick through muddy debris amid the stench of death, looking for anything they can reuse. The poorest are hit hardest as their houses are the flimsiest. There is little wailing, at first anyway - that comes later when the dead are buried - and few words are spoken. In a country that regularly suffers deadly typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and landslides, the urgent matter is simply to survive. And somehow, in a society based on patronage and obligation linked to a feudal past, Filipinos manage to pick themselves up after each disaster. No one is exempted. We are all back to zero and we all have to pitch in together," said Elmo Manching, the pastor of the Our Lady of Our Holy Rosary, a church near the village that was also destroyed in the typhoon. Money sent from many of the 10 million Filipinos who work overseas will help with the rebuilding, but that comes later. In Lat-osan village, the first task is to collect what rice can be salvaged from the fields and lay it out to be dried. Corn has to be collected and peeled. But the food is barely enough to feed the village for a day, and there is none to sell. The sound of hammering and sawing is everywhere. A muddy pink toy elephant swings in the structure of a new home that Mario Mainit, 40, is building for his family. Analie has placed a small pot plant outside. Lindo Mansing, the village chief, has distributed the sacks of rice that were stored in the village for an emergency, and some more has come from local authorities. "We will deliver the last of the rice at 3pm this afternoon," Mansing said. After that we have no more. Mercy Daguil, a mother of two, stands on a slab of concrete where her house was and pleads for help. "Our children are hungry already ... what can we do?" she said while sobbing and holding her five-month-old son, Andrei. No government or foreign aid has arrived in this part of Leyte because relief efforts have focused on the largest city, Tacloban, where the most people died. The Philippine government's relief effort is overwhelmed. Ramon Onate, the mayor of nearby Palompon, said there would be no power for three to six months. He doesn't expect any aid in the coming days. "We have to be resilient and act on our own," he said. Francisco Mainit, the old man, said Lat-osan would be rebuilt and his people would survive. "Calamities only make us stronger," he said. We can smile because we are alive.