Saturday, January 16, 2010
11:20 PM
Haiti earthquake
Relief groups face ‘race against time’ in Haiti
Bodies mount amid fears that desperation will boil over into lawlessness
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - With food, water and other aid flowing into Haiti in earnest, relief groups and officials are focused on moving the supplies out of the clogged airport and to hungry, haggard earthquake survivors in the capital.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was expected in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, scheduled to confer with President Rene Preval and U.S. and international civilian and military officials on how best to help the recovery effort and Haitian government.
Clinton on Friday cited a "race against time" before anxiety and anger create additional problems. Relief workers warned that unless supplies are quickly delivered, Port-au-Prince will degenerate into lawlessness.
A water delivery truck driver said he was attacked in one of the city's slums. There were reports of isolated looting as young men walked through downtown with machetes, and robbers reportedly shot one man whose body was left on the street.
"I don't know how much longer we can hold out," said Dee Leahy, a lay missionary from St. Louis, Missouri, who was working with nuns handing out provisions from their small stockpile. "We need food, we need medical supplies, we need medicine, we need vitamins and we need painkillers. And we need it urgently."
The Red Cross estimates 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in Tuesday's magnitude-7.0 earthquake. While workers are burying some in mass graves, countless bodies remain unclaimed in the streets and the limbs of the dead protrude from crushed schools and homes.
Other bodies were thrown into trucks and driven to the outskirts of town to be burned Friday. Residents paint toothpaste around their nostrils and beg passers-by for surgical masks to cut the smell. If the government still exists and the United Nations is around, I hope they can help us get the bodies out," said Sherine Pierre, a 21-year-old communications student whose sister died when her house collapsed.
A third of Haiti's 9 million people may be in need of aid. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the World Food Program was providing high-energy biscuits and ready-to-eat meals to around 8,000 people "several times a day."
"Obviously, that is only a drop in the bucket in the face of the massive need, but the agency will be scaling up to feed approximately 1 million people within 15 days and 2 million people within a month," he said.
U.S. officials on Friday also acknowledged the limits of their initial relief efforts, and promised a quick ramp-up in delivery of badly needed supplies. Dr. Rajiv Shah, the White House's coordinator of the U.S. relief effort who was also expected to arrive Saturday, indicated aid would begin flowing more freely in the next few days.
The effort to get aid to the victims has been stymied by blocked roads, congestion at the airport, limited equipment and other obstacles. U.N. peacekeepers patrolling the capital said popular anger was rising and warned aid convoys to add security to guard against looting.
Officials said some of the delivery problem was due to the damaged seaport. The arrival Friday of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson started helping immediately, taking pressure off the city's jammed airport. Within hours, an 82nd Airborne Division rapid response unit was handing out food, water and medical supplies from two cargo pallets outside the airport. Today showMilero Cedamou, the 33-year-old owner of a small water delivery company, twice drove his small tanker truck to a tent camp where thousands of homeless people are living. Hundreds clustered around to fill their plastic buckets.
"This is a crisis of unspeakable magnitude, it's normal for every Haitian to help," Cedamou said. "This is not charity."
Medical teams from other nations set up makeshift hospitals to tend to the critically injured. Time, however, was running short for the rescue of people who still might be alive under the rubble.
"Beyond three or four days without water, they'll be pretty ill," said Dr. Michael VanRooyen of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative in Boston. "Around three days would be where you would see people start to succumb."
The Haiti earthquake was really terrible, and heartbreaking in so many ways imaginable. Lost lives, changed destinies, injuries, grief-stricken families, shattered bodies.. The list really goes on. And the degree of social unrest is climbing up still higher.
At present, the death toll is climbing to 100,000, and it won't be surprising if the death toll increases still further, judging by the magnitude of the earthquake and the extent of damages that has already occurred.
I think I heard on the news about how more doctors should be sent in, and not more journalists. I guess it's a subjective issue, because after all, the earthquake is a human-interest issue and with the journalists at the scene, the probability of the news spreading might be much faster and in a way, might be able to help to bring in more necessary aid. However, since Haiti is one of the poorer regions of America, it would be more appropriate if there were more doctors available. Greater differences might be made to people who are hanging on to life by just a thread.
God, please bless all the poor victims in Haiti, and may more survivors be dug out alive, amidst all that wreckage and damage. Amen.
