Typhoon Haiyan: how hundreds have spent a week living with the dead But as winds and water pounded the city, the wall behind them came crashing down. "It [the wall] fell down but he held it up to help the children escape," recalled Sherwin Cabarce, 35, a local policeman and close friend. When all of them were safe it fell on his body. Mr Esperas was trapped and the coming surge of the sea lifted up by the terrifying storm drowned him. Government workers take the body of Mr Espera away with a pile of other victims (TOM PHILLIPS FOR THE TELEGRAPH) With Tacloban's government paralysed by the almost unimaginable scale of the disaster, and the grim task of body collecting only gaining momentum on Thursday, hundreds, perhaps thousands of local families have spent a week living, quite literally, among their dead. Despite his appeals to fellow police officers, Mr Cabarce said no government agency had come for his friend. "So they [the family] got his body and put it in the "CR" [Comfort Room]," he explained. For six days and six nights the family waited for the help that never came and as each hour passed, the stench from the room with mud-stained tiles grew stronger. It is a smell Tacloban now knows only too well: that of a husband, a father and a friend gradually decomposing in the tropical heat. Finally, nearly a week after Mr Espera's death, a bright orange truck pulled up outside the rubble-strewn entrance to a house that no longer exists and began extracting Mr Esperas from the ruins. This is our sitting room. He was sitting here," said his wife, Melissa Ribeira, pointing to a 3ft chunk of concrete that had come crashing down onto their sofa. Through the debris, the family's crockery could still be seen: five plastic plates on the top shelf of a still-intact wooden cabinet. Melissa Ribeira, left, and one of her daughters survey the remains of their family home after the body of her husband was taken away by government rescue workers (TOM PHILLIPS FOR THE TELEGRAPH) There were conflicting reports on Friday about the latest official death toll from Typhoon Haiyan. The United Nations placed the number at 4,460 while Manila's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council reported 2,360. Hours later Eduardo del Rosario, a senior civil defence official, gave the figure of 3,621. Meanwhile, earlier this week, Benigno Aquino, the country's president, said initial reports of at least 10,000 fatalities were overblown and likely the result of "emotional trauma." But a visit to San Jose, where Mr Esperas lived and died suggests the lower estimates are almost certainly too conservative. Hardly a house here was left undamaged by the typhoon and nearly a week after the calamity dead bodies still litter the community's streets and homes. At least 2,000 people died here alone, Jerry Sambo Jaokasin, Tacloban's deputy mayor, told The Telegraph on Thursday. "I tell you it [the death toll] is going to keep on rising," he said. Some of them are still floating in the sea. As the rescue workers carried Mr Esperas out of his home, over a wasteland of corrugated iron and fallen branches, his 40-year-old wife clenched her hands around the front gate and began to wail. "I don't really know what I feel now," she said, once the truck had set off towards its next objective. Ms Ribeira returned to her ruined family home and briefly smiled as she pondered how the love-of-her-life had made the ultimate sacrifice for his daughters. He saved us. He saved the kids," she said. Then words failed her and her face creased into a desperate frown. "Now I have only this to remember him," she said. She lifted her right hand to her mouth and kissed a golden wedding ring studded with four rows of tiny fake diamonds.