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A flood of food, water and U.S.
troops flowed toward Haiti on Saturday as donors squabbled over how
to reach hungry, haggard earthquake survivors still trying to claw
others from ruined buildings before the dying became the dead.
      

Haiti's government alone has already recovered 20,000 bodies -
not counting those recovered by independent agencies or relatives
themselves, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told The Associated
Press. He said a final toll of 100,000 dead would "seem to be the
minimum."
      

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was expected in
Port-au-Prince on Saturday, to confer with President Rene Preval
and U.S. and international officials.
      

She said officials are in a "race against time" before anxiety
and anger plunge Port-au-Prince into lawlessness.
      

The U.S. military operating Haiti's damaged, clogged main
airport said it can now handle 90 flights a day, but that wasn't
enough to cope with all the planes sent by foreign donors and
governments, prompting some to send help by land or by sea.
      

France's Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet told The Associated
Press that he had filed an official complaint to the U.S.
government after two French planes, one carrying a field hospital,
were denied permission to land.
      

A plane carrying the prime ministers of two Caribbean nations
also was forced to turn back late Friday due to a lack of space at
the airport, the Caricom trade bloc announced.
      

Haitian President Rene Preval urged donors to avoid arguments.
      

"This is an extremely difficult situation. We must keep our
cool to do coordination and not to throw accusations at each
other," Preval said after emerging from a meeting with donor
groups and nations at a dilapidated police station that serves as
his temporary headquarters due to the destruction of the National
Palace and many ministries.
      

Despite the high-level tension, there were growing signs that
foreign aid and rescue workers were getting to the people most in
need.
      

Crowds of Haitians thronged around foreign workers shoveling
through piles of wreckage at shattered buildings throughout the
city, using sniffer dogs, shovels and in some cases heavy earth
moving equipment.
      

On a street in the heavily damaged downtown area, the spade of a
massive bulldozer quickly filled up with dead bodies headed for a
morgue and immediate burial. Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max
Bellerive told AP that disposing of bodies had become a top
priority
      

"Sadly, we have to bring everybody to mass graves because we
are racing against a possible epidemic," told AP. Haitians already
have been piling bodies and burning them.
      

The U.S. Southern Command said it now has 24 helicopters flying
relief missions - many from warships off the coast - with 4,200
military personnel involved and 6,300 more due by Monday.
      

But there was still little sign of any aid in parts of the
capital four days after the quake, and scattered signs that the
desperate - or the criminal - were taking things into their own
hands.
      

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.
      

An AP photographer saw one looter haul a corpse from a coffin at
a city cemetery and then drive away with the box.
      

"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."
      

U.N. spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs told the BBC that the Haiti
earthquake was "one of the biggest disasters we've ever had to
face."
      

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.
      

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.
      


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 public
anger was rising and warned aid convoys to add security to guard
against looting.
      

International Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally said a convoy
with a field hospital and medical workers was heading into Haiti by
road Saturday from the Dominican Republic because "it's not
possible to fly anything into Port-au-Prince right now. The airport
is completely congested."
      

The World Health Organization has said eight hospitals in
Port-au-Prince were destroyed or damaged, severely curtailing
treatment available for the injured.
      

Officials said damage to the seaport also is a problem for
bringing in aid. The arrival Friday of the aircraft carrier USS
Carl Vinson helped immediately by taking pressure off the 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.
      

Others tried to help in smaller ways.
      

Milero 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 - who were still appearing.
      

"We have the hope we can find more people," said Chilean Maj.
Rodrigo Vasquez, whose teams were trying to save those trapped at
the Hotel Montana. But others weren't as hopeful. One Haitian woman
sitting outside of the destroyed hotel spoke on her cell phone and
sobbed. "No one's alive in there," she said in Creole.
      

And soon, it will be too late in any case.
      

"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."
      

Still, there were improbable triumphs.
      

"It's a miracle," said Anne-Marie Morel, raising her arms to
the sky after a neighbor was found alive in the rubble of a home.
If one person could be resuscitated from the utter destruction of
this street, there remained hope that many other could still be
found alive, she said.
      

"Nonsense, there is no God and no miracle," shouted back Remi
Polevard, another neighbor, who said his five children were
somewhere under the nearby debris.
      

"How could he do this to us?" Polevard yelled.
      

Associated Press writers contributing to this story included
Jonathan M. Katz, Paul Haven, Tamara Lush and Jennifer Kay in
Port-au-Prince; Ramon Almanzar in Santo Domingo, Dominican
Republic; Alexander G. Higgins, Frank Jordans and Bradley S.
Klapper in Geneva; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Danica
Coto and David McFadden in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Gallery

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Minn. Red Cross says more money needed in Haiti, not people

Disasters

A flood of food, water and U.S.
troops flowed toward Haiti on Saturday as donors squabbled over how
to reach hungry.

Haiti aid flow grows; feuds over reaching victims

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