PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, and MEXICO CITY — Relief
groups and governments struggled Friday to speed emergency aid to Haiti’searthquake
victims, who are increasingly desperate to find food, water and medical help
for the many injured.
U.N. officials said Friday that looters had broken into a
warehouse in Haiti’s ruined capital, Port-au-Prince, where the
World Food Program stored 15,000 tons of food, but they did not know how much
of the stockpile was stolen or when the theft took place, the Associated
Pressreported from Geneva.
U.N. officials warned that residents of impoverished Port-au-Prince are
becoming more impatient about the lack of assistance they’ve gotten since the
magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated their city Tuesday.
The world has vowed its help, but efforts are complicated by
earthquake damage to the capital’s airport and its seaport, which was closed.
Hundreds of U.S. troops were on the ground Friday morning, the leading edge of
a military contingent that is expected to number more than 5,500 by Monday.
“We have much more support on the way,” Army Lt.
Gen. Ken Keen said on ABC’s “Good Morning
America,” AP reported. “Our priority is getting relief out to needy
people, to mitigate the suffering that the Haitian people are experiencing
right now.”
Former President Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti,
said in a separate television interview that it is crucial to get food and
water intoHaiti the next four or five days, as survivors are pulled from
the rubble by rescue specialists who have begun to arrive in Port-au-Prince.
Clinton said even $10 donations by individuals
could make a big difference in coming days. President Obama tapped Clinton and
former President George W. Bush to lead fundraising for quake
victims.
On Thursday, emergency aid flowed from around the world
toward Haiti, only to confront a reality that grew more desperate by the
hour: Crippled ports and communications left stunned earthquake survivors on
their own to scavenge for food and water, carry away legions of dead and dig
frantically for voices calling out from under the rubble.
Obama promised $100 million and the full resources
of the U.S. government for what he said would be one of the largest relief
efforts in recent history. U.S. officials said 30 countries had either sent aid
or promised to do so. Rescue teams from eight countries had arrived.
But two days after the earthquake, there was little evidence
of the aid effort in the capital of the hemisphere’s poorest country.
“In Haiti, you’re lucky if they come with a
screwdriver,” said Jean Marc Mercier, a Haitian American who spent
the last two days hunting for survivors in the wreckage of the Hotel
Montana, a longtime gathering spot for diplomats, journalists, humanitarian
workers and businessmen.
The toppled six-story hotel was an exception to the scenes
of abandonment elsewhere; a rescue team newly arrived from Virginia was
combing the debris.
Mercier, who runs a computer business in Haiti, said he
and others had been burrowing by hand toward voices calling out from deep
inside the wreckage. They had managed to save one woman, an aid worker.
“Last night after I went to bed, all I heard were the
voices in my head. One guy told me not to bother: ‘Go help people who are in
better shape. There is no way you are getting to me,'” said Mercier, 44.
“I wasn’t able to sleep all night.”
Asked how many people were in the hotel when it collapsed,
he whispered, “Hundreds.”
Aid officials said the risk of violence and looting would
increase as scant food and water run out and frustrated families fail to find
medical care for the injured.
Officials who were willing to estimate the number of dead
acknowledged that they were just guessing. Victor Jackson, an official
with Haiti’sRed Cross, told Reuters news agency that his organization was
estimating 45,000 to 50,000 had died.
All across Port-au-Prince, it seemed, the living bore
the dead — in the beds of pickups, in wheelbarrows, on makeshift stretchers. At
a hospital named St. Marie, crowded a day earlier with dozens of people seeking
help, the courtyard was empty except for two cleaners mopping bloody water into
the street.
Even many who didn’t lose their homes were afraid to sleep
in them.
Lionel Aceveje, a police officer who lives in a hillside
shantytown near the suburb of Petionville, said his family of six was sleeping
outside in the evening chill. “Every little shaking terrifies us,” he
said.
Both the airport and seaport were proving to be bottlenecks
for the international aid effort.
Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard medical professor
and U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, said supply lines to Haiti are
often fragile, even without a devastating natural disaster.
The quake-damaged seaport is “basically shut
down,” said Farmer, who has 27 years’ experience working in Haiti.
Air traffic was backed up, he said, with planes jockeying to land at a
minimally functioning airport.
UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s charity,
was amassing supplies in Panama for an airlift. The agency sent one
plane with medical kits, blankets and tents to Port-au-Prince on
Thursday, but the plane could not land and had to return to Panama.
“It’s really a logistics nightmare,” Farmer said.
“We need to fix the port and open up other land bridges and air spaces
where planes and helicopters can land.”
The U.N. response has been further hampered by its own
losses. Although there’s no official body count, U.N. officials said at least
30 of their colleagues in Haiti are known to be dead and 100 to 150
remain missing.
Among the rescue teams in place was a 72-member contingent
from Southern California. A Los Angeles County search-and-rescue
team that includes firefighters, doctors, six rescue dogs and their handlers
arrived Thursday morning. The team is equipped with medical supplies as well as
cameras, listening devices and cutting tools.
In Washington, Obama enlisted both of his immediate
predecessors, Clinton and Bush, to lead the U.S. aid initiative, following an
example set by Bush after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It was his
first presidential request of Bush, whom he criticized for his administration’s
handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“You will not be forsaken; you will not be
forgotten,” Obama said, addressing the people of Haiti. “In
this, your hour of greatest need, America stands with you.”
U.S. officials were able to evacuate 300 to 400 U.S.
citizens by air, most of them to the neighboring Dominican Republic, which
shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
A U.S. diplomat was among the dead. State Department spokesman P.J.
Crowley said Victoria DeLong, 57, a cultural affairs officer, had
been stationed in Haiti since last year. He said she was from California,
but her hometown was not immediately available.
One immediate focus of the U.S. effort was restoring
communications, which were so bad that Obama was unable to reach Haitian
PresidentRene Preval on Thursday afternoon.
The U.S. aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, equipped with
three operating rooms, 19 helicopters and a water-purification system, was en
route toHaiti and was expected to arrive Friday to help shuttle relief
supplies and serve as a floating hospital.
The Navy also dispatched an amphibious assault
ship, the Bataan, with 2,000 members of a Marine expeditionary force aboard and
its own medical facilities. Officials said they hoped the Marine contingent
would arrive as soon as Friday.
The military also has ordered two other amphibious vessels
to set sail.
About 125 troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne
Division were also sent, the leading edge of a contingent of 3,000
soldiers, Defense officials said.
They will confront a patchwork of destruction. In downtown Port-au-Prince,
many old buildings with columns and porticoes toppled into the wide and
once-splendid Grand Rue. The middle section of the National Palace and
all three domes fell, but the president’s apartment on the grounds appeared to
be intact.
The adjacent Dessalines barracks, the infamous army barracks
where enemies of the Duvalier dictatorship were tortured and killed, still
stood. But many government buildings, including the tax office and Health
Ministry, were complete losses.
For residents, the shortages of food, water and fuel carried
the prospect of increased hardship in a nation with a volatile history. Chaotic
lines formed at gas stations, though it was unclear whether any gasoline would
be pumped. Those with enough fuel created a noisy traffic jam on one main
boulevard heading out of the capital.
People scavenged for water, carrying empty canisters in the
street.
One elderly man, who wanted to be identified by only his
first name, Milton, said Haitians were hoping that U.S. Marines, who have
been deployed during times of political upheaval, would come again.
“When the U.S. occupation is good and big, it creates
work, builds roads, helps people,” he said. Not only that, Milton added,
Marines tended to toss the remains of their meals into the city’s omnipresent
mountains of garbage.
“They bring good ham and cheese,” he said.
“And you know it’s good food because they have eaten it.”
—
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