Haitians Including Children Buried Alive! Screams Heard Under Buildings

Haiti Rescuers Race To Find People Buried In Rubble



A U.S.-led rescue effort brought ships, mobile hospitals and food to Haiti after the prime minister said the earthquake two days ago that devastated Port- au-Prince may have killed more than 100,000 people.

The United Nations and international aid groups said time is running out to save thousands of people trapped beneath collapsed buildings in the capital by the country’s worst quake in more than a century. President Rene Preval said his nation, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest, has been “destroyed.”

“People buried under the rubble are still alive,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday. “We must save as many as possible. The most urgent need is for emergency search and rescue teams.”

In Port-au-Prince, a city of about 2 million, bodies are heaped along streets and corpses of small children piled outside schools as flies begin to gather, the Associated Press reported. The UN said clean water is lacking and hotels, hospitals and the national penitentiary suffered extensive damage, as did the offices of UN peacekeeping forces and the presidential palace.

“I cannot live in the palace, I cannot live in my own house,” Preval told CNN in an interview at the airport. “The two collapsed.”

Haiti’s population of 9.6 million has a per capita income of about $560, with 54 percent of Haitians living on less than $1 a day and 78 percent on less than $2 daily, according to the World Bank. The gross domestic product was $7 billion in 2008. The country is still recovering from four tropical storms or hurricanes that killed at least 800 people in 2008.

Food, Shelter

“The first needs are for food, shelter and water, the absolute basics,” said David Humphries, a spokesman in Washington for CHF International, an aid group with 170 members in Haiti and a four-year budget of $104 million from the United States Agency for International Development.

USAID said in a statement today it’s sending 14,550 tons of food aid to Haiti to feed 1.2 million people for two weeks.

A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, search and rescue squads from Miami and Virginia, and cell phone repair engineers are making their way to Haiti after President Barack Obama ordered a “swift, coordinated” relief effort.

The U.S. military is “very seriously” looking at sending troops to support UN and Haitian forces to maintain order in the Caribbean nation, General Douglas Fraser, head of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, told reporters at the State Department in Washington.

Rescue Efforts

Rescue efforts are still unfolding and Fraser said it may take days for large quantities of supplies to reach survivors. Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said that “well over” 100,000 people may have died in the magnitude 7.0 temblor centered about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the capital. The U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site the quake was the “most violent” in Haiti in more than 100 years.

Florian Westphal, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, said reliable figures on the number of casualties aren’t yet available.

“We are unfortunately nowhere in a position to give a reliable estimate” on the number of dead and injured, Westphal said in a telephone interview today. “About 3 million inhabitants are very much affected, but the focus now is on the capital.”

Port Damaged

A U.S. Coast Guard inspection found significant quake damage to piers at Port-au-Prince port that may limit the flow of relief supplies brought by sea in the next few days, State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley told reporters in Washington.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates called off a trip to Asia to help coordinate relief efforts in Washington.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said today in Paris that three planes with military police and first aid have already arrived in Haiti and a fourth is on its way.

“A city has sunk and the toll is terrible,” Fillon said.

Germany’s Red Cross is airlifting a field hospital with doctors and nurses to Haiti tomorrow, Peter Ossowski, head of Red Cross logistics in Berlin, said in an N24 television interview. The tent facility will have space for 200 patients.

The U.K. has sent 64 fire fighters and eight search and rescue specialists to Haiti. The teams, which landed in Haiti this morning, are equipped with heavy lifting gear and search and rescue dogs, U.K. International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander told the BBC today. The U.K. will give $10 million to relief efforts, the government said today in London.

Economic Damage


Economic damage may be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to estimates from Eqecat Inc., an Oakland, California-based company that builds financial risk models to help insurers prepare for catastrophes. Eqecat estimated that as many as 2 million people may be affected by the earthquake and aftershocks.

Citigroup Inc., the U.S. bank that operates in more than 100 countries, said its three-story office building in Port-au- Prince collapsed. The bank is trying to account for 44 people who worked in the building, said Liliana Mejia, a spokeswoman for the New York-based bank. Gladys Coupet, Citigroup’s top executive in Haiti, broke her leg, Mejia said.

Montreal-based Gildan Activewear Inc., the largest T-shirt maker in North America, said in a statement distributed by Marketwire that one of its three contract facilities in Haiti suffered “substantial damage.”

U.S. Citizens

Search and Rescue squads from Fairfax County, Virginia, and Los Angeles have been sent to Haiti aboard U.S. military flights, Crowley said. Crowley said the U.S. Embassy is checking on the status of the estimated 45,000 U.S. citizens on the island, while it works to help direct relief efforts.

The headquarters of the UN’s 9,000-person security mission in Haiti collapsed, hampering efforts to coordinate international aid. The UN said 16 peacekeepers were confirmed dead and 56 were injured. Another 150 are unaccounted for.

The U.S. government is sending two, 72-man search and rescue teams with dogs, said Rajiv Shah, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, whom Obama assigned to coordinate the U.S. relief effort.

Four U.S. Coast Guard cutters are already approaching Haiti and the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is scheduled to arrive today.

Florida’s Miami-Dade County will send a 75-member Search and Rescue team, Mayor Carlos Alvarez said at a news conference.

Mobilizing

“They’re mobilizing and will be ready to leave when they’re called,” he said. Some 34,000 people live in Miami’s Little Haiti district, according to the city’s Web site.

The U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command, which operates the hospital ship Comfort, docked in Baltimore, was ordered to prepare to sail if needed, said Trish Larsen, a spokeswoman for the command in Washington. The ship could leave port in about five days, she said.

The Comfort can carry 650 medical professionals. It provided support in New York City after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, according to its Web site.


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Sources: AP, Bloomberg News, CNN, Google Maps