Images Of Tacloban: Before And After Typhoon Haiyan

By Meredith Rizzo

Published November 14, 2013 at 3:42 PM CST

Typhoon Haiyan caused widespread destruction in parts of the Philippines when it tore through on Friday. One of the hardest-hit areas was the city of Tacloban and its more than 220,000 residents. "Virtually all of the structures, if they were not made out of concrete or steel, are gone," a top U.S. military commander said.

These satellite images from Google and DigitalGlobe show how Tacloban and the Anibong district looked in February 2012 and then two days after Haiyan made landfall.

This 2012 image of part of Tacloban shows the location of the Anibong district (spit of land in upper left) in relation to downtown.

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Meredith Rizzo

Meredith Rizzo is a visuals editor and art director on NPR's Science desk. She produces multimedia stories that illuminate science topics through visual reporting, animation, illustration, photography and video. In her time on the Science desk, she's reported from Hong Kong during the early days of the pandemic, photographed the experiences of the first patient to receive an experimental CRISPR treatment for sickle cell disease and covered post-wildfire issues from Australia to California. In 2021, she worked with a team on NPR's Joy Generator, a randomized ideas machine for ways to tap into positive emotions following a year of life in the pandemic. In 2019, she photographed, reported and produced another interactive visual guide exploring how the shape and size of many common grocery store plastics affect their recyclability.