Struggle to keep Haiti survivors alive
By Benedict Mander in Port-au-Prince
Published: January 15 2010
By Friday afternoon the once-imposing Palace of Justice in central Port-au-Prince was little more than a scavenger dump. Flattened in Tuesday’s massive earthquake, people clambered over the ruins, picking over documents, family photographs, odd shoes, an antique hat and much more.
The stench of rotting flesh rising from the rubble into the hot Caribbean air supported people’s claims that it was also a mass grave.
“There must be hundreds of people beneath us,” said one onlooker, who used a stained rag to cover his nose to alleviate the stench. “Why is no one helping them?” he asked, as an apparently lifeless body metres away suddenly convulsed.
Officials admitted that the full scale of the Haiti disaster was unknown. The Haitian Red Cross estimated the death toll to be about 50,000. Others put it at double that. Haitian officials said they had buried 40,000 and expected to bury a further 100,000. The United Nations already buried 9,000 bodies.
Conditions at the makeshift hospital in the UN compound in Port-au-Prince were indicative of the desperate struggle to help the millions of victims. The ground was packed with camp beds, with many victims screaming, others unconscious.
“It’s like a civil war, it’s a disaster. About a fifth of the people here are going to die,” said John MacDonald, a surgeon forming part of a group flown in from the University of Miami. “We’re doing the minimal, it’s just a palliative – we just don’t have enough supplies or equipment”.
Talks were under way to turn the national football stadium into a temporary hospital.
Desperate people blocked streets with corpses in one part of Port-au-Prince, the capital, to demand relief following Tuesday’s 7.0-magnitude quake that was thought to have killed up to 50,000 people and affected about one-third of the impoverished nation’s 9m population
A block away from the Palace of Justice, in the square opposite Haiti’s presidential palace, also in ruins, thousands of people left destitute by the most powerful earthquake to hit the former French colony since it was established in 1804 had erected a camp of makeshift shelters.
“Three of our family have died. We’ve lost everything, we have nothing, not even any money to buy food,” said a woman with a resigned expression on her face, cradling her baby Marie.
She explained that the people camped out across Port-au-Prince had either lost their homes, or were afraid to return to what remained should buildings collapse altogether.
Such scenes were mirrored across the city. Taller buildings were crumpled with floors lying on top of each other after the walls gave way, others were fatally cracked and leaning at oblique angles. Many more were just reduced to piles of rubble.
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, said half the 3m population of the capital had no access to food, water, shelter or electricity. Food distribution had begun but supplies of high-energy biscuits and other food were as yet only reaching 8,000 people. “This is a drop in the bucket in the face of massive need,” he said, adding that relief workers would be feeding 1m survivors within 15 days, rising to 2m within a month.
Appealing for more emergency supplies of tents, medicines and medical personnel, Mr Ban said the UN would launch an appeal for $560m (€390m, £345m) of emergency aid to help finance the aid operation.
Latest estimates from the UN said more than $150m in cash from governments, individuals and organisations had been pledged, with a further $300m in commitments, including from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, called on the Paris Club of donor nations to accelerate the implementation of deals struck last year to cancel more than $110m of Haiti’s debts.
In addition to the refugee camps, the streets of Port-au-Prince were teeming with homeless Haitians, some apparently wondering aimlessly, others with their heads in their hands.
Still more chose to flee the city altogether to escape the chaos and pestilence, dragging suitcases, balancing large bags on their head or pushing wheelbarrows.
Mr Ban also stressed that despite the “chaotic situation”, “co-ordination has been maintained”.
David Wimhurst, the UN spokesman in Haiti, said that René Préval, the Haitian president, senior ministers, Edmond Mulet, the UN’s acting special representative to Haiti, and foreign ambassadors had set four key priorities at a meeting on Thursday.
These are re-establishing telecommunication links, burying bodies and moving refugees to more hygienic surroundings, delivering medical assistance and facilitating aid deliveries by waiving visas for aid workers.
On Friday afternoon there was little sign in much of Port-au-Prince that much aid was actually being distributed.
Many in the city were concerned that desperation was starting to set in, leaving the city increasingly dangerous.
“There is no more Haiti. It is finished,” said Jean Charles Willio, a young Haitian whose mother had lost both her legs after her home collapsed on top of her, while he was standing just outside. “Total destruction,” chimed his brother, Vladimir.
Standing outside the battered buildings of Port-au-Prince international airport, with the ceaseless roar of US military relief aircraft making conversation difficult, Steve, a UN engineer who declined to give his surname, conveyed in graphic terms the terrifying power of the Haiti earthquake.
“When the quake hit, this truck was bouncing up and down like a ping-pong ball,” he said, patting the bonnet of a chunky 4x4 all-terrain vehicle.
“When I turned to look at the shanty town [beside my house], it was gone.”
The co-ordination efforts for relief were hampered by the destruction of the headquarters of the UN’s 9,000-strong peacekeeping mission with at least 55 UN staff feared dead.
The US was leading the aid efforts. An aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, arrived off Port-au-Prince and up to 10,000 personnel were being deployed.
Robert Gates, US defence secretary, said he had no idea how long the troops would stay in theatre and how much the operation would cost.
“It looks to me like a fairly long-term undertaking for the international community and the US as part of that and as a principal player.”
Additional reporting by Andrew Jack in London, Daniel Dombey in Washington and Harvey Morris in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.
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