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Haiti aid begins to arrive in quake zone
Red Cross officials say death toll could hit 50,000
monga Bay.com http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0114-haiti-earthquake-satellite-images.html
Erika Santelices / AFP - Getty Images
A man searching for relatives covers his nostrils with a piece of tissue because of the stench of the rotting bodies laid down on a makeshift morgue set in an open yard in Port-au-Prince on Thursday.
Slideshow
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34845446/ns/news-picture_stories/displaymode/1247/?beginSlide=1
Earthquake rocks Haiti
The Caribbean island is devastated by a 7.0-magnitude quake and dozens of aftershocks.
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Slideshow
Devastation
The Caribbean island is devastated by a 7.0-magnitude quake and dozens of aftershocks.
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The Livesay (Haiti) Weblog
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History of Haiti
View key dates of the Caribbean nation.
msnbc.com news services
updated 3:48 p.m. ET Jan. 14, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Desperately needed aid from around the world slowly made its way Thursday into Haiti, where supply bottlenecks and a leadership vacuum left rescuers scrambling on their own to save the trapped and injured and get relief supplies into the capital.
The international Red Cross estimated that 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in Tuesday's magnitude-7 earthquake.
President Barack Obama announced that "one of the largest relief efforts in our recent history" is moving toward Haiti, with thousands of troops and a broad array of civilian rescue workers flying or sailing in to aid the stricken country — backed by more than $100 million in relief funds.
To the Haitians, Obama promised: "You will not be forsaken."
The nascent flow of rescue workers showed some results: A newly arrived search team pulled a U.N. security worker alive from the organization's collapsed headquarters, where about 100 people are still trapped. He stood, held up a fist in celebration, and was helped off to a hospital.
But thousands of Haitians, living or dead, remained buried beneath collapsed buildings, leaving friends and relatives to claw at the wreckage, often with bare hands, in attempts to free them.
Many of those pulled out dead still lay in the street, often covered by a white cloth, in the tropical heat. Some people dragged the dust-covered dead along the roads toward the morgue.
There, people came to hunt for relatives in a macabre sea of hundreds of bodies just a few feet where badly wounded quake victims sat awaiting a doctor from the neighboring hospital.
'Water is the currency'
Planes from China, France, Spain and the United States landed at Port-au-Prince's airport, carrying searchers and tons of water, food, medicine and other supplies — with more promised from around the globe for the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, where the international Red Cross estimated 3 million people — a third of the population — may need emergency relief.
"Money is worth nothing right now, water is the currency," one foreign aid-worker told Reuters.
But an official at the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said the agency had stopped all civilian flights from the United States to Haiti at the request of the Haitian government, because there is no room on the ground for more planes and not enough jet fuel for planes to go back.
“It’s been just crazy,” said Charity Peguero, a company spokeswoman for Aero Ambulancia. “People are willing to pay whatever price to get their people there.”
Her firm, an emergency flight company in the Dominican Republic, had shuttled medical crews and injured passengers in and out of Haiti on 15 flights on Wednesday. Most victims had suffered from facial fractures, skull fractures and other life-threatening injuries, she said.
On Thursday, it was a different scene.
The firm’s helicopters were grounded, stranding aid workers, news crews and others hoping to travel to Haiti, she said.
“Minutes are passing by and people are needing help,” she said.
Shortages, frustrations
It took six hours to unload a Chinese plane because the airport lacked the needed equipment — a hint of possible congestion ahead as a global response brings a stream of aid flights to the airport, itself damaged by Tuesday's magnitude-7 earthquake.
"We don't have enough handling equipment or the people to run it," said U.S. Air Force Col. Ben McMullin, part of the team handling traffic control at the airport. "We're trying to control the flow of aircraft."
In Geneva, Red Cross spokesman Jean-Luc Martinage said the Haitian Red Cross reported an estimate of 45,000 to 50,000 dead based reports from its network of volunteers across the quake-stricken capital, Port-au-Prince.
There seemed to be little official Haitian presence in much of Port-au-Prince — or at the airport.
McMullin said about 60 planes carrying 2,000 people had landed since Wednesday, when the airport reopened after the quake, and noon Thursday.
U.S. military forklift operators helped unload some foreign flights as well as U.S. cargoes and Haitian staff were far outnumbered by foreign aid workers and military, and no senior Haitian officials were visible.
Digging in with bare hands
In the city, trucks carrying police and U.N. workers or equipment to clear away debris were often stuck in traffic on roads filled with trucks, cars and pedestrians. At many collapsed buildings, neighbors and volunteers dug through rubble to free trapped residents without help from the government.
Video
Sights and sounds from Haiti earthquake
Jan. 14: TODAY takes a look at some of the heart-wrenching video and still images from Port-au-Prince.
Today show
Since the earthquake, President Rene Preval has maintained his typical low profile, granting only a couple of media interviews and making few public appearances. His own residences were damaged in the quake and the Parliament building collapsed, along with some other 'ministries and departments.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. had been in touch with Preval, and added: "We're not taking over Haiti. We are helping to stabilize Haiti, we're helping to provide them lifesaving support."
The often-chaotic city was surprisingly calm, despite the devastation, though journalists occasionally heard the sound of isolated gunfire. It was not clear if it was aimed at people. Even in normal times, guards sometimes fire shotguns in the air to keep people away from stores.
There has been widespread looting of collapsed buildings since the earthquake hit, but rarely of undamaged shops, said Matt Marek, Haiti country representative of the American Red Cross.
"There is no other way to get provisions," he told The Associated Press. "Even if you have money, those resources are going to be exhausted in a few days."
'There is nothing'
Bodies lay in the street, often covered by a white cloth, in the tropical heat. Some people dragged the dust-covered dead along the roads, trying to reach a hospital where they might leave them.
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Others tried to carry dead relatives to nearby hills for impromptu burials, prompting Brazil's military — the biggest continent among U.N. peacekeepers — to warn the practice could lead to an epidemic. It said it is asking authorities to create a new cemetery.
The Brazilian military said it also was worried that bodies could be left too long because many Voodoo followers in Haiti do not allow the dead to be touched before all their rituals are concluded.
There was damage outside the capital too. In the port city of Jacmel to the south, about 3,000 people forced from their homes slept overnight on the runway of an airstrip, said Yael Tallyrand, a high school student interviewed by e-mail and instant message.
"I almost cried, because so much people were crying, praying and I had never seen this in my entire life," said Talleyrand, whose parents run an economic development and health foundation.
Jimitre Coquillon, a doctor's assistant working at a triage center set up in a hotel parking lot, witness devastation as well.
"This is much worse than a hurricane," Coquillon said. "There's no water. There's nothing. Thirsty people are going to die."
CONTINUED : Rescuers use doors as stretchers
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