TACLOBAN - You can condition your body for a large number of things. Athletes condition their hearts and lungs to perform to elite standards. Competitive eaters condition their stomachs to be able to take more food. I don't think there's any conditioning possible though, to be able to accept the stench of decomposing human flesh.

I've just arrived on the ground in Tacloban to support the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) team responding to the Typhoon Haiyan emergency. I flew in from Manila with Mike Duffin from Ericsson Response. Mike is coming with WIDER equipment to extend the data network and provide wireless connectivity to humanitarian workers.

From the moment the doors of our C-130 US Military aircraft opened, you could feel the emergency. Humanitarian and military flights are constantly landing and taking off. Large numbers of humanitarian and government disaster response crews are milling around planning their course of action. Huge airlifts of relief supplies are being unloaded onto the tarmac. All the while hundreds of local Filippinos from Tacloban wait patiently with their belongings and surviving family members for a flight to take them away from the destruction.

From the airport we drove to Tacloban City Hall where the ETC is currently operating along with the World Food Programme (WFP). The sights en route are overwhelming. You can watch it on the news and think "oh wow, that's horrible" but until you're here, seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling the disaster, you cannot really understand the extent of the destruction.

Tall palm trees are completely uprooted and lying on the side of the road. Concrete walls that once ran along the coast now lie on their side. Houses have completely collapsed in on themselves leaving nothing but piles of rubble. And then there're the body bags. Bag after bag lying side by side on the curb waiting to be collected by the government and taken away to mass graves. This is what the ETC crew has been operating in since the super typhoon struck.

It's now Friday and the team has doubled in size with the addition of Mike as well as Gilles Hoffman, Serge Wagener and Brice Tavernier from emergency.lu. The ETC response solution was set-up yesterday on the roof of City Hall and is now providing internet connectivity to staff from UN, NGO and local government coordination groups.

The plan for tomorrow is to extend connectivity to the building next door through wireless links. We will also then look at linking it with another site across town including basecamp being established by the International Humanitarian Partnership (IHP).

The city of Tacloban has been completely ravaged by Typhoon Haiyan. This small coastal city gets struck by typhoons and tropical storms every year but there was simply no amount of conditioning that could prepare them for such devastation. What doesn't seem to have been affected by the tragedy, however, is the spirit of the Filipino people. Despite the death and destruction, they remain positive, eager to rebuild and move on. This is truly inspiring.

By Mariko Hall, ETC Philippines