By Jason Gutierrez

CAINTA, PHILIPPINES - Angry Philippine flood survivors queued here Tuesday for tinned fish and noodles while another line built for a single toilet at a gymnasium that was turned into an evacuation centre.

On the concrete floor of the covered basketball court, bedraggled children wearing dirty clothes or barely anything at all lay on flattened cardboard cartons, sleeping side-by-side with dogs. Their parents attempted to build fires with charcoal to cook their meagre food rations.

"Get in line!" district official Candy Regavillo barked at the hungry hordes.

"Show us some discipline and we will assure everyone gets their share." Some in the crowd angrily yelled back: "When will we get ours?"

About 3,000 residents of the depressed neighbourhood of San Andres, situated beside a creek in Cainta on the outskirts of Metro Manila, fled to the government gym after flood waters swamped their homes on Saturday.

The once-in-a-lifetime deluge submerged 80 per cent of Metro Manila, as well as vast tracts of neighbouring provinces, killing at least 240 people and forcing more than 370,000 people into makeshift camps like the one at Cainta.

The government on Monday appealed for international aid as it admitted it could not cope with the vast numbers of people needing help, saying it was short of food, clean water, medicine and other supplies. At the Cainta camp, those needs were on full display.

"I lined up at 4:00 am and all I got was a bottle of water," grumbled 67-year-old grandfather Primo Orcillo at breakfast time, who was barefoot and had the trouser-less child of a missing neighbour with him.

Like many others, Orcillo had missed out on a blue plastic bag of two canned sardines and a pack of noodles designed to sustain each family for an entire day.

"We are very hungry. I haven't even had coffee," Orcillo complained.

He said his own daughter was in a different shelter in another part of town, while her husband had gone back to their home to try to salvage what he could.

Even though the food was gone, the lines continued to stretch 250 metres as people hoped more supplies would be delivered. A municipal fire truck arrived to deliver water, but no one knew when the next batch of rations, provided by the local government, was coming.

Some nursing mothers were also asking for infant formula milk, while a top concern was stopping any disease outbreaks that could arise from having so many people crammed together in dirty conditions, officials said.

"We are trying to educate them on proper handling of water and sanitation," said Cristina Bernaldo, a district social welfare worker.

"That's the most difficult thing to teach." Even harder when 3,000 people had access to just one toilet.

Bernaldo's boss, Joe Ferrer, summed up the exasperation felt by so many in Cainta and the hundreds of other shelters set up over the past few days.

"We need clothing, food supplies, food rations and medicines," said Ferrer, the top district official. "We don't know how long we will be able to sustain this."