Emergency aid flowed from around the world toward Haiti on Thursday, but damage to the capital’s airfield and port as well as the magnitude of devastation left increasingly desperate earthquake survivors largely on their own to dig out survivors and carry away the legions of dead.
U.S. officials said eight countries had sent rescue teams, and 30 had either sent aid or pledged to do so. Planes carrying rescuers and tons of water, food and medical supplies arrived from the United States, China, France and Spain.
But in the capital, Port-au-Prince, near the quake’s epicenter, the atmosphere grew desperate. Survivors wrestled to find food, water and shelter, with little sign that rescue efforts had taken hold or the government was functioning. Communications were so bad that President Barack Obama was unable to reach his Haitian counterpart, Rene Preval, by phone Thursday afternoon.
By some official estimates, 3 million people were affected by the earthquake, roughly a third of the population of the impoverished Caribbean nation. The Haitian Red Cross said the death toll is expected to be in the tens of thousands.
“No one knows with precision, no one can confirm a figure. Our organization thinks between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died,” Victor Jackson, an assistant national coordinator with Haiti’s Red Cross, told the Reuters news agency. “We also think there are 3 million people affected throughout the country, either injured or homeless.”
Residents were mostly left on their own for a third day.
“In Haiti, you’re lucky if they come with a screwdriver,” said Jean Marc Mercier, who spent the last two days hunting for survivors at the upscale Hotel Montana.
“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,'” Mercier said. “The stuff I saw yesterday I can’t even describe.”
Help was on the way, but both the air and seaports were bottlenecks.
Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard medical professor and U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, said Haitian supply lines are often fragile, even without a natural disaster.
The quake-damaged port is “basically shut down,” Farmer said, thwarting efforts to bring in supplies by sea. Air traffic is backed up at a minimally functioning airport.
U.N. officials, led by former President Bill Clinton, met in New York on Thursday in an international effort to prioritize what should arrive first: medical supplies from the U.S., for example, or search and rescue teams from Germany.
“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 aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, equipped with three operating rooms, 19 helicopters and a water purification system, was expected to arrive Friday. The Navy also has dispatched an amphibious assault ship with 2,000 Marines and its own medical facilities.
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tsusman@tribune.com
