He says hundreds of people are at the airport, itself badly damaged, trying to get on a flight out of the city.
Philippine Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said the scale of the relief operation that was now required was overwhelming, with some places described as a wasteland of mud and debris.
"From a helicopter, you can see the extent of devastation. From the shore and moving a kilometre inland, there are no structures standing. It was like a tsunami," he told Reuters.
A UN official who arrived in Tacloban on Saturday, Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, said he was told there had been a 3m (10ft) water surge through the city, in places up to 10m.
Meanwhile Leo Dacaynos, an official in Eastern Samar province, told local radio 300 people had been found dead in a single town, Basey, with another 2,000 missing and many injured.
Communication is still limited in many areas.
In Guiuan, a town of 40,000 people near where the typhoon made landfall, television footage showed flattened houses and roads strewn with debris.
One woman told the ABS-CBN channel: "I have no house, I have no clothes. I don't know how I will restart my life... I don't know what happened to us. We are appealing for help. Whoever has a good heart, I appeal to you - please help Guiuan."
The town of Baco, in Oriental Mindoro province, to the north-west, is said to be 80% under water.
The latest report from the Philippines' Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council confirmed 229 deaths as of 11:00 GMT on Sunday. It said almost 630,000 people had been reported displaced.
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