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Haiti quake aftermath: bodies in streets, hotels used as hospitals

Posted by CaribShout on January 13, 2010 at 9:30pm

Bodies lined the streets while hotels were converted into makeshift hospitals today across Haiti's shattered capital, Port-au-Prince, as the world geared up for a major humanitarian effort in the wake of the earthquake that devastated the desperately poor Caribbean nation. A day after the 7.0-magnitude quake, rescuers hunted for survivors amid a grim tableau of destruction. Entire hillsides of homes appeared to have tumbled while in other areas structures stood unaffected next to buildings that had been reduced to piles of dusty debris. Some building lay in pancake-like concrete heaps. Homeless or fearful survivors took shelter under tarps across the capital, including the grounds outside the prime minister's office. The nation's president, Rene Preval, described the destruction as "unimaginable" and predicted the death toll in Tuesday's quake would reach into the thousands. Preval told the Miami Herald that he had stepped over bodies and heard cries from people trapped under the collapsed national Parliament building. "Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed," Preval said. "There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them." Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said a preliminary assessment of the widespread damage led him to fear that the number of dead could be "well over 100,000." "I hope that's not true," Bellerive told CNN, acknowledging that he had no hard numbers.

The head of the U.N. mission in Haiti and the archbishop of Port-au-Prince were reportedly among the dead as buildings -- including ramshackle shanties, schools and the presidential palace -- suffered astonishing damage. The U.N. reported that the main prison also collapsed and that inmates had escaped. Peter Dailey, a New York City lawyer, was in a Port-au-Prince hotel when the earthquake struck. "We were sitting around having coffee and the porch began to buck like the deck of an ocean liner," he recalled. Dailey, in Haiti to visit an agricultural project, said he ducked under a table until the shaking stopped. When he looked around, he saw that the retaining wall in front of the hotel had collapsed, killing some women who had been sitting there selling wares. The earthquake largely knocked out telephone service, hobbling communications from the capital and making it difficult for government officials and relief organizations to measure the full scope of the devastation. Relief workers said it could take a day or two to know how many of Haiti's 9 million residents need assistance. President Obama promised that the United States would help in any way it could in the worldwide effort to deal with what he called a "cruel and incomprehensible" tragedy.

"This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity we all share," Obama said in televised remarks from the White House this morning. "With just a few hundred miles of ocean between us, Haitians are our neighbors in the Americas and here at home. We have to be with them in their hour of need." U.S. officials said most of the damage appeared to be concentrated around Port-au-Prince, a teeming city of 2 million that was already a sprawling slum, with cinder-block shanties packed densely along hillsides and in low-lying areas. The U.S. military today deployed a 30-person team to assess the damage and help manage the response. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters this morning evacuated four severely injured U.S. Embassy employees to the Navy base in Guantanamo, Cuba. About 45,000 U.S. citizens live in Haiti, but officials said they had heard no reports so far of widespread casualties among them. Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said as many as 2,000 Marines could soon be sent to Haiti to provide aid and help keep law and order. The military's immediate goals are to help restore telecommunications and get the city's damaged airport up and running, Fraser told reporters in Washington. The airport is reported to be usable but the control tower was badly damaged, prompting commercial airlines to cancel flights to and from Port-au-Prince. Haiti's ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Joseph, appealed early today for medical help and rescue specialists. He said the country was in urgent need of a hospital ship and rescue personnel. Joseph said many government ministry buildings had collapsed and that the presidential palace, a graceful white French colonial structure, was damaged. "It's a major catastrophe," he told reporters at the Haitian Embassy in Washington.

But Joseph said the "silver lining" was that the earthquake struck shortly before 5 p.m., when many office workers had gone home for the day, probably reducing the number of fatalities. The body of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot was found in the ruins of his office, according to the Rev. Pierre Le Beller of the Saint Jacques Missionary Center in Landivisiau, France, who spoke to the Associated Press by telephone. He said that fellow missionaries in Haiti had told him they found Miot's body. The French foreign minister said the head of the U.N. mission in Port-au-Prince, Tunisian diplomat Hedi Annabi, was killed along with other U.N. personnel when the organization's headquarters in the Christopher Hotel collapsed. French Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher said the information came from the Haitian ambassador to France. "Many people are still trapped inside" the headquarters, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this morning from New York. Ban called for an international relief effort, saying, "There is no doubt that we are facing a major humanitarian emergency." Troops from the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, mostly Brazilian, worked through the night to try to reach those trapped under the hotel rubble. Rescuers recovered several bodies and badly injured people. The U.S. is expected to take the lead in international efforts to provide aid to victims. Pledges of help have come from a number of governments, including France, Venezuela, Canada and Mexico, which was sending teams of earthquake rescuers created after Mexico City's devastating 1985 earthquake. Private aid groups were also cranking up efforts to send helpers and raise money for victims. "For a country and a people who are no strangers to hardship and suffering, this tragedy seems especially cruel and incomprehensible," Obama said. "Our thoughts and prayers are also with the many Haitian Americans around our country who do not yet know the fate of their families and loved ones back home. Obama said he had directed the administration "to respond with a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives. The people of Haiti will have the full support of the United States in the urgent effort to rescue those trapped beneath the rubble, and to deliver the humanitarian relief -- the food, water and medicine -- that Haitians will need in the coming days." Rajiv Shah of the U.S. Agency for International Development will coordinate the response to the earthquake, Obama said. Hampered by downed telephone lines and power outages, reports of the devastation trickled out Tuesday. "We are hearing of sheer devastation," Caryl Stern, president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, said Tuesday. The organization has 100 workers in Haiti. UNICEF employees in Port-au-Prince reported seeing a school collapse with children inside. "It's horrible," Stern said. "The worst earthquake in such a poor region. You are starting from behind the eight ball." Photos showed buildings in rubble and houses tumbled down ravines. The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti shares a border with the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola. Some residents reportedly felt some shaking in Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital, but no serious damage was reported. Already battered in recent years by storms, military coups and gang violence, much of Haiti is a hodgepodge of slums, shoddy construction and people living on the edge. "I can hear very distressed people . . . . a lot of distress, people wailing, trying to find loved ones trapped under the rubble," Ian Rodgers, with Save the Children in Port-au-Prince, told CNN by telephone Tuesday evening. A spokeswoman for Catholic Relief Services said the group's representative in Haiti, Karel Zelenka, described "total disaster and chaos" before the telephone line went dead. Zelenka told colleagues that the Haitian capital was covered with dust. "He estimates there must be thousands of people dead," the spokeswoman, Sara Fajardo, said in an interview from the group's office in Maryland. Fajardo said the group has stockpiles of food and other goods to serve 5,000 families, but aid workers worry that relief efforts could be hampered by poor road conditions and lack of security. Ambassador Joseph said in Washington that he spoke to officials in Port-au-Prince and that President Preval was safe but his headquarters were badly damaged. He quoted a senior Haitian official as saying "buildings were crumbling right and left" near the presidential palace. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described the disaster as "catastrophic." The United States is offering our full assistance to Haiti and to others in the region," Clinton said Tuesday from Honolulu. "We will be providing both civilian and military disaster relief and humanitarian assistance. And our prayers are with the people who have suffered, their families and their loved ones." Philip J. Crowley, the State Department's senior spokesman, said Tuesday that U.S. Embassy personnel had reported widespread damage, including collapsed buildings and walls, and bodies in the streets. The Associated Press said its reporters saw a hospital collapse in the wealthy suburb of Petionville, which overlooks the capital. "Within a minute of the quake . . . soil, dust and smoke rose up over the city, a blanket that completely covered the city and obscured it for about 12 minutes until the atmospheric conditions dissipated the dust," Mike Godfrey, who works as a contractor for USAID, told CNN from Port-au-Prince on Tuesday. Nan Buzard of the American Red Cross, who is mobilizing teams to travel to Haiti, said, "It is very grim." tina.susman@latimes.com ken.ellingwood@latimes.com Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City, Michael Muskal in Los Angeles and Christi Parsons, Paul Richter and Julian E. Barnes in Washington, and Times wire services contributed to this report. Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
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Tags: aid, caribbean, caribshout, earthquake, haiti, yelehaiti

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