Tina Susman

Haiti: After the Quake, Day 3

DISASTER IN HAITI;
Aid surge gets going in Haiti;
Helped by the U.S. military, supplies begin to flow -- but time is short

Los Angeles Times
January 16, 2010 Saturday

Tina Susman and Joe Mozingo and Julian E. Barnes

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, AND WASHINGTON

The leading edge of a massive relief effort gained a toehold around the Haitian capital Friday, with the U.S. military taking control of the airport and helicopters ferrying supplies from an aircraft carrier positioned off the coast. But deep within the city's neighborhoods, residents fended for themselves -- evacuating those who could go, caring for those who couldn't and putting to rest those who would move no more.

Hundreds of doctors and aid workers and tons of supplies arrived at the airport, now teeming with traffic. U.S. officials said their goal was to land an aid flight every 20 minutes. Through the weekend, the U.S. military contingent assigned to the relief effort will grow to as many as 10,000, the officials said.

As aid poured in, those trying to distribute it faced the challenge of punching through mountains of rubble, smashed cars and streets strewn with bodies to reach a population clamoring for help.

Aside from a few police officers trying to control crowds at a gas station or direct traffic, there was virtually no sign of any authority in Port-au-Prince. The capital seemed remarkably calm three days after being devastated by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, despite the growing frustration of people with no food, water or shelter.

Franz Solomon, 30, who was searching for the bodies of his mother and sister, still unburied two days after they were taken to the main morgue, was furious that he had nowhere to turn for help.

"The government can't do anything anymore," he said. "It doesn't even exist."

Scenes of desperation were everywhere, and the stench of death began wafting from beneath the broken concrete and flattened roofs.

The United Nations estimated that in the worst-affected areas of Port-au-Prince, as many as half the buildings were damaged or destroyed.

At one intersection, an elderly woman approached a vehicle, holding out a horribly burned right arm, skin charred and the hand swollen. With a bewildered look on her face, she asked where to go for help.

More than 100 members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division were in place. U.S. officials said the military deployment would include 4,000 to 5,000 sailors on ships, including the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, plus 3,000 soldiers and 2,000 Marines on the ground.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that she would visit Haiti today with Rajiv Shah, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to see the relief effort up close. Clinton said she would meet with Haitian President Rene Preval and other officials and with U.S. authorities working to get aid to victims.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he would come Sunday. The U.N. appealed for $550 million to provide food, water and shelter to the victims. At least 37 U.N. personnel, part of a large, long-standing contingent in Haiti, were killed in the quake and 300 others still were unaccounted for, officials said.

Some aid made it through the obstacles. Water was being distributed from trucks in certain areas, a U.N. team distributed water-purification tablets, and French aid workers visited tent cities to see what people needed most.

Michelle Chouinard, Haiti director for Doctors Without Borders, said the group hoped to set up medical tents and perform surgeries. For now, though, its workers could offer only the crudest help: bandages and some floor space or furniture for the seriously injured.

Laura Blank of the aid group World Vision, which was expecting 18 metric tons of aid to arrive on a flight Friday evening, said that like most Haitians, the agency was having problems finding fuel.

"If we don't have gas in the cars, we can't get anywhere, and who has time to sit in a gas line all day?" Blank said as workers at the agency compound moved boxes of latex gloves and gauze as well as plastic bags containing clothes and hygiene supplies out of a warehouse where they had been stashed for hurricane season. The agency began distributing the items to nearby churches and clinics after the quake, and was one day away from running out.

Even the incoming aid, such as portable cooking kits and containers for water, would be of limited help if they could not find water to fill the containers, and the proper food for the cooking kits.

"The biggest crisis obviously is how do you get the resources all over the place?" said David Lipin of San Carlos, Calif., commander of the 40-member disaster medical assistance team sent in from California.

It was one of five such teams that arrived Friday afternoon, deployed by the State Department. About 250 doctors, nurses, emergency medical technicians, surgeons and even a couple of veterinarians were among those waiting to learn where they would be deployed -- and how.

There were still no reliable estimates of the number of dead, but some Haitian officials have said the number could exceed 100,000.

Officials and analysts said the speed with which aid is delivered will be key to preventing people from turning violent in their desperation -- at a time when Haiti's government is almost nowhere to be seen.

Alex Puig, a security expert for International SOS, a Philadelphia-based risk management firm working in Haiti, said some violence was likely, despite the presence of U.S. forces. "It's going to be a tough, long road, " he said.

The scenes of devastation prompted Haiti's deposed former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to offer to return. Speaking to reporters in South Africa, where he lives in exile, Aristide said he felt a need to try to save the lives of victims, but he refused to take questions on whether he planned to fly to Haiti without an official invitation.

"We are ready to leave today, tomorrow, at any time, to join the people of Haiti, to share in their suffering, help rebuild the economy, moving from misery to poverty with dignity," Aristide said, reading a statement in an almost inaudible whisper.

Aristide, 56, became Haiti's first democratically elected leader in 1991 but was ousted in a coup led by the army later that year. He regained power in 1994 and was reelected president in 2000, before being toppled again in a violent 2004 coup. Aristide took asylum in South Africa but could still face legal charges if he returned to Haiti.

In the meantime, Haitians left to their own devices buried bodies where they could.

On the edge of the city's cemetery along a once-grand boulevard, people heaved the dead into a 20-foot-deep mass grave, one of the makeshift burial sites popping up.

It held 60 bodies so far, and more were arriving every few minutes by wheelbarrow and in pickups festooned with logos such as "Love baby."

Sanitation crews went through the streets, loading bodies into dump trucks. In a parking lot outside the capital's main morgue, about 2,000 bodies lay in the sun, waiting to be identified and taken away.

Solomon circled the rotting mass looking for his mother. He had brought the bodies of his mother and sister two days earlier, but now realized they would end up in a mass grave unless he took them for burial. Amid the stench, he found his sister's body and wrapped her in a bag. He couldn't recognize his mother anymore.

The family of Elie Pierre, a pastor, survived -- as did his home. But like many Port-au-Prince residents, they had been sleeping outdoors in fear of new tremors.

On Friday, Pierre loaded about 10 members of his family into a small pickup to shuttle them out of the city. He planned to stay behind to find help for his 23-year-old daughter, Kesly, whose leg was broken during the quake.

Asked if he thought help was on the way, Pierre shook his head.

"I don't believe anything right now."

 

Haiti: After the Quake, Day 2

Desperate to help and be helped;
Aid begins arriving in Haiti, but obstacles stand between it and survivors

Los Angeles Times

January 15, 2010 Friday   Tina Susman, Tracy Wilkinson and Joe Mozingo

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI  

Emergency aid flowed from around the world toward Haiti on Thursday, 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.

President 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 already had arrived.

But two days after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, 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's Red 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 air- and seaports 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, Presidents Clinton and George W. 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 President Rene 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 to Haiti and was expected to arrive today 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 today.

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 if 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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HAITI: After the Quake, Day 1

DISASTER IN HAITI;
Destruction in Haiti 'unimaginable';
In the paralyzed capital, bodies line the streets and medical care is scarce

Los Angeles Times

January 14, 2010 Thursday

Tina Susman, Joe Mozingo, Ken Ellingwood


DATELINE: PORT-AU-PRINC

The capital of Haiti lay in ruins Wednesday, shattered by an earthquake it was not built to withstand. With most international aid yet to arrive, bodies lined the streets, the injured gathered at hospitals devoid of doctors or functioning equipment, swaths of the city were reduced to rubble and even the presidential palace -- long a symbol of whatever stability the country could muster -- was damaged and sagging.

Most telecommunications were down, making it next to impossible for the government and aid agencies to count the casualties or assess the extent of damage from the magnitude 7.0 quake that struck Tuesday afternoon.

President Rene Preval described the destruction as "unimaginable" and predicted that the death toll would reach into the thousands. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said a preliminary assessment led him to fear that the number of dead could be "well over 100,000."

Rescuers, often equipped with little more than their hands, 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 piles of dusty debris. Some buildings lay in pancake-like concrete heaps.

Relief workers said it could take a day or two to know how many of Haiti's 9 million residents need assistance.

Homeless or fearful survivors took shelter under tarps on the grounds outside the prime minister's office and elsewhere across the capital. As night fell, crowds filled downtown streets. People sought open-air spots to spend the night, either because they were afraid to be indoors or had no home left.

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is a place where misery is an everyday condition and disasters -- of both the natural and man-caused variety -- are not uncommon. At best, the government has made only halting progress toward improving the lives of its citizens. The quake, said to be the strongest in the country in 200 years, caused death and destruction of a whole new magnitude.

In a predominantly Catholic country that already relied heavily on United Nations relief, the dead were reported to include the archbishop of Port-au-Prince and at least 16 U.N. personnel, possibly including the head of the U.N. mission. Both the hotel that served as U.N. headquarters and the city's main cathedral were heavily damaged, as were the Parliament building, schools, hospitals and other hotels.

The U.N. reported that the main prison also had collapsed and that inmates escaped.

Some looting was reported, and about 3,000 police officers and international peacekeepers were trying to maintain security.

U.S. officials said most of the damage appeared to be concentrated around Port-au-Prince, a teeming city of 2 million that sits like a hive of gray concrete that creeps up a mountainside rising out of the Caribbean. The homes are mostly made of cheap, porous concrete made with sand from nearby quarries.

In the aftermath of the quake, entire big-box apartment blocks had collapsed along roads carved into the hills. Rubble had blown out onto the roads. Next to the debris lay bodies, their faces dutifully covered by sheets.

On Martin Luther King Avenue, just past a sign reading, "Bienvenue a Port-au-Prince," the slender legs of three young children poked out from under sheets. The bodies of three adults were strewn nearby.

At two badly damaged hospitals in the capital, there were virtually no doctors or medical workers in sight.

Outside St. Esprit Hospital, bodies lay on the street, including that of a woman whose white hair showed above the sheet covering her, with a small child next to her.

But behind the compound's iron doors, the scene was worse: people dead and apparently dying on the ground as their relatives stood by helplessly, watching them. Some of the injured wept in pain; others lay silently.

One man dragged visitors to see his mother, who lay on her back wearing only a light yellow flowery robe. She was on the street just outside the hospital gate, one leg clearly broken.

"I don't know what to do," another man lamented as he dragged visitors over to look at his cousin, who lay on the ground covered only with a towel.

Many of those on the ground had been hooked up to IVs from the hospital, but apparently by their own relatives.

President Obama called the earthquake a "cruel and incomprehensible tragedy," and promised that the U.S. would help in any way it could.

"This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity we all share," Obama said in televised remarks from the White House. "With just a few hundred miles of ocean between us, Haitians are our neighbors in the Americas and here at home."

The U.S. military deployed a 30-member team to assess the damage and help manage the response. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters evacuated four severely injured U.S. Embassy employees to the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said more than 100 of the estimated 45,000 Americans in Haiti had gathered at the airport to be evacuated. Officials said they had heard no reports so far of widespread casualties among U.S. citizens.

The United States also sent two 72-member urban search-and-rescue teams, including a specialized rescue team from the Los Angeles County Fire Department. U.S. military aircraft began arriving Wednesday, and the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was due to reach Haiti today.

Officials also were planning to send an amphibious ship with 2,000 Marines, and have alerted a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in North Carolina, about 2,500 soldiers, to prepare to help.

Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said the military's immediate goals are to help restore telecommunications and get the airport up and running. The control tower was heavily damaged, and many commercial flights were canceled.

The L.A. County rescue team was to fly to Port-au- Prince on Wednesday night, officials said. It includes paramedics, structural engineers, search dogs, physicians and firefighters trained in using sophisticated equipment to find and free people trapped in collapsed buildings.

Kimberley Shoaf, associate director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters, said residents of Haiti were likely to face an increased risk of dengue fever, malaria and measles. She also warned that the lack of healthcare could lead to complications among the injured.

Haiti's ambassador to the United States, Raymond Joseph, said that the "silver lining" was that the earthquake struck shortly before 5 p.m., when many office workers had gone home for the day.

The body of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot was found in the ruins of his office, said the Rev. Pierre Le Beller of the St. Jacques Missionary Center in Landivisiau, France, who spoke to the Associated Press by telephone. He said that fellow missionaries in Haiti had told him that they had found Miot's body.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner 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. Kouchner said the information came from the Haitian ambassador to France. U.N. officials said 100 to 150 U.N. personnel were missing, including Annabi.

Troops from the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, mostly Brazilian, worked through the night to try to reach those trapped in the hotel. Rescuers recovered several bodies and seriously injured people.

The U.S. is expected to lead the international aid effort.

Obama said he had directed his administration "to respond with a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives."

Rajiv Shah of the U.S. Agency for International Development will coordinate the response, Obama said.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton canceled a trip to the Pacific and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates put off plans to travel to Australia in order to deal with the quake's aftermath.

"The situation is horrific and, unfortunately, we do not have the kind of information yet that gives us a road map as to how we're going to be able to respond effectively, although we are moving a lot of our assets to position them to do so," Clinton said before scrapping the planned visit to Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

Former President Bill Clinton, who serves as the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, called on people around the world to donate money to relief organizations or the U.N.

"We do not have the logistical or organizational capacity right now to handle a lot of things, even if we need those things," he said. "What we need now is food, water, supplies for first aid and shelter."

HAITI: A City in Ruins

DISASTER IN HAITI;
Song and tears from a city in ruins;
In Port-au-Prince, chants turn to screams as an aftershock hits

Los Angeles Times
January 14, 2010 Thursday

Tina Susman and Joe Mozingo

DATELINE: PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI

As darkness fell on Haiti's capital Wednesday, crowds sought out the relative safety of the streets and open spaces.

In a hillside neighborhood just above downtown Port-au-Prince, they gathered under a spectacularly starry sky. And they sang. Like a huge school choir, earthquake survivors broke out in loud communal song, a soothing sound in a city with no power, little water and untold numbers of bodies hidden in rubble or strewn along the roadsides.

But the songs turned to screams as a strong aftershock hit, shaking the buildings that survived the magnitude 7.0 earthquake Tuesday and jolting the streets.

In moments, the crowd on the streets grew. Many of those who had risked remaining inside ran from their shaky shelters, away from the walls and ceilings that had caused such destruction a day earlier. People loitered, some looking at nearby buildings or collapsed walls.

Then the singing and chanting continued -- Catholic, Protestant, voodoo. "God, all of our hope is in you!" one man cried.

Across Port-au-Prince, the damage seemed nearly random.

Some homes covering hillsides looked as if they had simply crumbled into the dirt. Major government institutions and businesses were damaged or destroyed. Other buildings, such as the cheerful-looking Rose Restaurant, appeared untouched.

Officials could only guess at the number of dead and injured. Along the city's roadsides, the bodies were neatly lined up, some covered in white sheets and some not.

The corpses included that of a girl, perhaps a teenager, in pink shorts; a couple lying next to each other; a man covered in a sheet save for his horribly swollen feet.

There was virtually no sign of outside assistance other than a few United Nations vehicles passing by. There was little 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.

Tent and tarp cities sprang up wherever there was shade or open space. Virtually no shops were open, leaving residents in the street with no apparent means of finding food.

Outside the Canape Vert Hospital, a crowd surged toward the entrance. A few bodies covered with sheets lay nearby on the road. From the streets, choked with cars and pedestrians, one could hear a person screaming in the medical facility.

At the St. Esprit Hospital, a knot of people gathered at the gate seeking treatment for the injured.

"They take them out here because they can't pay," said Colas Enelson, 36.

Enelson said his pregnant wife had suffered broken legs. Neighbors had pulled her out of the rubble of their home.

Like other anxious relatives gathered at this spot and in the open around the city, he feared that she might die here, staring up at the stars.

Many of the injured had hideous wounds. Outside a makeshift Doctors Without Borders center a short walk from St. Esprit, one young woman, her foot impaled on a large wooden stake, lay on a refrigerator door being used as a stretcher.

A clearly harried worker in the guarded compound said there was no means to treat severely injured people. Only bandages and other equipment to provide basic care were available, the worker said.

The most formal kind of "triage" in plain sight was on the grounds of the once-lavish Villa Creole hotel, 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 lounge chairs.

Some of the worst damage appeared to be in hillside neighborhoods such as Petionville, a suburb of the capital. People used sledgehammers and their bare hands to dig through a collapsed shopping center, tossing aside mattresses and office supplies, according to news reports. More than a dozen cars were entombed, including a U.N. truck.

Elsewhere in the capital, structures lay collapsed like giant sandwiches, with layer upon layer of concrete and remnants showing through: mattresses, shreds of clothing, chairs.

On the gentle hillside near downtown, two young women lay on mattresses with makeshift IVs supported by sticks and cinder blocks, apparently crafted by a nurse.

The brother of one of the women said a house had fallen on them.

Around the women, as night fell and the stars came out, the fearful and dispossessed settled down to sleep.

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