A vicious typhoon had recently raged through the center of the Philippines appears to have killed hundreds, if not thousands of people. Officials were struggling on Sunday to distribute aid to homeless and destitute survivors.

“The devastation is, I don’t have the words for it,” Interior Minister Mar Roxas told the AP after touring Tacloban on Saturday.

Typhoon Haiyan packed sustained winds of 147 miles per hour, and gusts up to 170 miles per hour. The official fatality count is still 151, as reported on Saturday, but is said to go exponentially higher. In the Philippines, eyewitnesses reported storm surges as high as trees and winds that sounded like the roar of jet engines. A BBC correspondent said looting was widespread as the area was left without food, water, or electricity.

The storm weakened Sunday to 101 mph as it sped toward Vietnam where it is expected to land on Monday. Half a million people have been evacuated from there. Hundreds are crowding the Tacloban airport, which was mostly flattened and left a muddy wasteland by ferocious winds, trying to find flights out of the region.

“The rescue operation is ongoing. We expect a very high number of fatalities as well as injured,” Roxas told the AP. Dew to power outages, there is no way to communicate with the people in a mass sort of way.

The island nation may be slammed with more misery later this week. Accuweather is tracking a tropical disturbance, which may evolve into a tropical storm and may land midweek.

Weather stations should have paid more attention to the growing typhoon and should have found a way to evacuate as the citizens of Vietnam have. Rescue teams should at least begin evacuating people in advance in order to prevent any more fatalities with the possible upcoming storm. They should also make up a plan for survival incase this ever happens again.