Some hillsides of homes look as if they had simply crumbled into the dirt. Other buildings, such as the cheerful-looking
But along the city’s roadsides, the true cost of
Tuesday’s magnitude 7 earthquake was readily visible: the bodies of
victims neatly lined up, some covered in white sheets and some not.
The corpses included that of a young girl — perhaps
a teenager — in pink shorts; a couple lying next to one another; a man
covered in a sheet save for his horribly swollen feet poking out from
beneath.
There was virtually no sign of outside assistance
other than a few U.N. vehicles passing by — and there was no police
presence, no water being handed out, no encampments except those set up
by people apparently left homeless by the quake or those too afraid to
go back into their ramshackle homes in case of aftershocks.
Tent and tarp cities had quickly sprung up wherever
there was shade or open space, including on the sprawling grounds
outside the prime minister’s office. Virtually no shops were open,
leaving residents in the street with no apparent means of feeding
themselves or finding water.
Outside the Hopital Canape-Vert, a crowd surged
toward the entrance. A few bodies covered in sheets lay nearby on the
road. From the crowded streets, choked with cars and pedestrians, one
could hear a person screaming from inside the medical facility.
The most formal kind of “triage” in plain sight was on the grounds of the once-lavish
which had been turned into a makeshift outdoor hospital. The grounds
were covered with injured — swollen, bloody limbs, crying children,
others too weak or injured to make a sound.
“Ask him if he can wiggle his toes,” a man who
appeared to be a doctor said to a woman as a young boy slumped in one
of the hotel’s wicker lounge chairs.
Across the capital, some of the worst damage appeared to be in hillside neighborhoods such as Petionville.
Elsewhere in the city, structures lay collapsed like
giant sandwiches, with layer upon layer of concrete and remnants
showing through: mattresses, shreds of clothing, chairs.
Major hotels were either destroyed or closed. A gas
station had collapsed, burying a black sedan and, presumably, its
passengers.
—
(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.
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