Cooler but still well above normal this week

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

By Paul Haven and Mike Melia, Associated Press Writers

      Port-au-Prince, Haiti  (AP) - A frightening new aftershock
Wednesday forced more earthquake survivors onto the capital's
streets to live and sent others fleeing to the countryside, where
aid was only beginning to reach wrecked towns.


      A flotilla of rescue vessels, meanwhile, led by the U.S.
hospital ship Comfort, converged on Port-au-Prince harbor to help
fill gaps in still-lagging global efforts to deliver water, food
and medical help. Hundreds of thousands of survivors of Haiti's
cataclysmic earthquake were living in makeshift tents or on
blankets and plastic sheets under the tropical sun.


      The strongest tremor since the Jan. 12 quake struck at 6:03
a.m., just before sunrise while many still slept. From the teeming
plaza near the collapsed presidential palace to a hillside tent
city, the 5.9-magnitude aftershock lasted only seconds but panicked
thousands of Haitians.

      "Jesus!" they cried as rubble tumbled and dust rose anew from
government buildings around the plaza. Parents gathered up children
and ran.


      Up in the hills, where U.S. troops were helping thousands of
homeless, people bolted screaming from their tents. Jajoute
Ricardo, 24, came running from his house, fearing its collapse.

      "Nobody will go to their house now," he said, as he sought a
tent of his own. "It is chaos, for real."

      A slow vibration intensified into side-to-side shaking that
lasted about eight seconds - compared to last week's far stronger
initial quake that seemed to go on for 30 seconds and registered
7.0 magnitude.


      Throngs again sought out small, ramshackle "tap-tap" buses to
take them away from the city. On Port-au-Prince's beaches, more
than 20,000 people looked for boats to carry them down the coast,
the local Signal FM radio reported.

      But the desperation may be deeper outside the capital, closer to
last week's quake epicenter.


      "We're waiting for food, for water, for anything," Emmanuel
Doris-Cherie, 32, said in Leogane, 25 miles (40 kilometers)
southwest of Port-au-Prince. Homeless in Leogane lived under sheets
draped across tree branches, and the damaged hospital "lacks
everything," Red Cross surgeon Hassan Nasreddine said.


      Hundreds of Canadian soldiers and sailors were deploying to that
town and to Jacmel on the south coast to support relief efforts,
and the Haitian government sent a plane and an overland team to
assess needs in Petit-Goave, a seaside town 10 miles (15
kilometers) farther west from Leogane that was the epicenter of
Wednesday's aftershock.


      The death toll was estimated at 200,000, according to Haitian
government figures relayed by the European Commission, with 80,000
buried in mass graves. The commission raised its estimate of
homeless to 2 million, from 1.5 million, and said 250,000 people
needed urgent aid.


      With search dogs and detection gear, U.S. and other rescue teams
worked into Wednesday night in hopes of finding buried survivors.
But hopes were dimming.


      "It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and each day
the needles are disappearing," said Steven Chin of the Los Angeles
County rescue team.


      One rescue was reported. The International Medical Corps (IMC)
said it cared for a child found in quake ruins on Wednesday. The
boy's uncle told doctors and a nurse with the Los Angeles-based
organization that relatives pulled the 5-year-old from the wreckage
of his home after searching for a week, said Margaret Aguirre, an
IMC spokeswoman in Haiti.

      Family members working to recover a body said they heard a voice
saying, "I'm here, I'm here," Aguirre recounted.


      The boy was dehydrated, drinking four bottles of water and two
juices, but otherwise unharmed, she said.


      Many badly injured Haitians still awaited lifesaving surgery.


      "It is like working in a war situation," said Rosa Crestani of
Doctors Without Borders at the Choscal Hospital. "We don't have
any morphine to manage pain for our patients."


      The damaged hospitals and emergency medical centers set up in
Port-au-Prince needed surgeons, fuel for generators, oxygen and
countless other kinds of medical supplies, aid groups said.

      Dr. Evan Lyon, of the U.S.-based Partners in Health, messaged
from the central University Hospital that the facility was within
24 hours of running out of key operating room supplies. Wednesday's
aftershock was yet another blow: Surgical teams and patients were
forced to evacuate temporarily.

      Troops of the 82nd Airborne Division were providing security at
the hospital. A helicopter landing pad was designated nearby for
airlifting the most critical patients to the U.S. Navy hospital
ship Comfort.


      The great white ship, 894 feet (272 meters) long, with a medical
staff of 550, was anchored in Port-au-Prince harbor and had taken
aboard its first two surgical patients by helicopter late Tuesday
even as it was steaming in.

      It joined the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and other U.S.
warships offshore, along with the French landing craft Francis
Garnier, which carried a medical team, hundreds of tents and other
aid.


      The Garnier offloaded pallets of bottled water and prepared
meals at the city's quake-damaged port, while U.S. Army divers
surveyed the soundness of the main pier, where trucks drove only on
the edges because of damage down its center.

      The seaborne rescue fleet will soon be reinforced by the Spanish
ship Castilla, with 50 doctors and 450 troops, and by three other
U.S.-based Navy vessels diverted from a scheduled Middle East
mission. Canadian warships were already in Haitian waters, and an
Italian aircraft carrier, the Cavour, also will join the flotilla
with medical teams and engineers.

      U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said at U.N. headquarters in
New York that it's believed that 3 million people are affected,
with 2 million of those needing food for at least six months.


      Between the U.N. World Food Program and deliveries by the Red
Cross and other private aid groups, about a half-million Haitians
should have been reached with "reasonable quantities of food," he
said. "That's still very far short of what's needed."

      At the hillside tent camp, set up on a golf course where an 82nd
Airborne unit has its base, the lines of hungry and thirsty
stretched downhill and out of sight as paratroopers handed out
bottled water and ready-to-eat meals as fast as helicopters brought
them in.


      In one sign of normalcy, women carried baskets of cauliflower,
sweet potatoes and sugar cane into the city from farms in the
hills. Some food and water was on sale in Port-au-Prince's markets,
but prices had skyrocketed.

      "We need money, man. I don't have enough to buy anything,"
said Ricardo, the newly homeless man who was seeking work and food,
as well as a tent, at the golf course encampment.

      Looking over the food lines there, 82nd Airborne Capt. John
Hartsock said, "This is the first time I've seen it this
orderly."


      President Rene Preval stressed the relative quiet prevailing
over much of Port-au-Prince. People understand, he told French
radio, "it is through calmness (and) an even more organized
solidarity that we're going to get out of this."

      Concerns still persisted that looting and violence that flared
up in pockets in recent days could spread. In downtown
Port-au-Prince on Wednesday, dozens of men, women and children
clambered over the rubble of a department store, hauling off
clocks, lamps, towels, even women's hair extensions. Police stood
nearby, not intervening.

      The European Commission's report described the security
situation as "deteriorating."

      U.S. troops - some 11,500 soldiers, Marines and sailors onshore
and offshore as of Wednesday and expected to total 16,000 by the
weekend - were seen slowly ratcheting up control over parts of the
city. Marine reinforcements were to help escort aid deliveries. One
unescorted truck was seen screeching off Wednesday when a crowd
grew unruly as its tents were being distributed.

      The U.N. was adding 2,000 peacekeepers to the 7,000 already in
Haiti, and 1,500 more police to the 2,100-member international
force. That plan suffered a setback when Haiti - with historically
tense relations with the neighboring Dominican Republic - rejected
a Dominican offer of an 800-strong battalion, according to a
Western diplomat at the U.N., speaking on condition of anonymity in
the absence of a public announcement.

      Other small signs of normalcy rippled over Port-au-Prince:
Street vendors had found flowers to sell to those wishing to honor
their dead. One or two money transfer agencies reopened to receive
wired money from Haitians abroad. Officials said banks would open
later this week.

      But Wednesday's aftershock, the stench of the lingering dead,
and the tears and upstretched hands of helpless Haitians made clear
that the country's tragedy will continue for months and years as
this poor land counts and remembers its losses.

      After the tremor's dust settled Wednesday, street merchant
Marie-Jose Decosse walked past the partly collapsed St. Francois de
Salles Hospital in Carrefour Feuille, one of the worst-hit sections
of town. She raised her arms to the sky, and spoke for millions.

      "Lord have mercy, for we are sinners!" she shouted. "Please
have mercy on Haiti."


      Associated Press writers contributing to this report included
Alfred de Montesquiou, Tamara Lush, Kevin Maurer, Michelle Faul and
Bill Gorman in Haiti; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Emma
Vandore and Elaine Ganley in Paris, and Aoife White in Brussels.

Gallery

Minnesota companies give big to Haiti relief

House approves faster tax breaks for Haiti donations

ARC on the ground in Haiti

New 6.1-quake hits Haiti, people flee into streets

Disasters

A frightening new aftershock
Wednesday forced more earthquake survivors onto the capital's
streets to live and sent others fleeing to the countryside, where
aid was only beginning to reach wrecked towns.

Aftershock drives more from Haitian capital

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox