Asia-Pacific
Haitians pray, cry for help in the ruins
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-01-18 11:00
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 A destroyed cathedral is seen in Port-au-Prince January 16, 2010. [Agencies] |
Celebrating Mass outside the once-proud pink-and-white cathedral, now a shell of rubble where a rotting body lay in the entrance, the Rev. Eric Toussaint preached of thanksgiving to a small congregation of old women and other haggard survivors assembled under the open sky.
"Why give thanks to God? Because we are here," Toussaint said. "What happened is the will of God. We are in the hands of God now."
Mondesir Raymone, a 27-year-old single mother of two, was grateful. "We have survived by the grace of God," she said.
"It's a catastrophe and it is God who has put this upon us," said Jean-Andre Noel, 39, a computer technician. "Those who live in Haiti need everything. We need food, we need drink, we need medicine. We need help."
Were his parishioners being helped? Toussaint was asked. "Not yet," he replied.
The U.N. World Food Program was "pretty well on target to reach more than 60,000 people today," up from 40,000 the previous day, WFP spokesman David Orr said.
But U.N. officials said they must raise that to 2 million within a month.
The US aid chief, Rajiv Shah, told "Fox News Sunday" he believed the US distributed 130,000 "meals ready to eat" on Saturday, but the need was much larger. "We're really trying to address it," he said.
Some food was still commercially available in the city, but prices had skyrocketed beyond what most people could afford.
In a further sign of the delays, the aid group CARE had yet to set a plan for distributing 38 tons of WFP high-energy biscuits in outlying areas of Haiti, CARE spokesman Brian Feagans said Sunday. He did not say why.
The Geneva-based aid group Doctors Without Borders put it bluntly: "There is little sign of significant aid distribution."
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 A woman argues with a fire fighter during water distribution after Tuesday's earthquake in Port-au-Prince, January 16, 2010. [Agencies] |
The "major difficulty," it said, was the bottleneck at the airport, under US military control. It said a flight carrying its own inflatable hospital was denied landing clearance and was being trucked overland from Santo Domingo, almost 200 miles away in the Dominican Republic, delaying its arrival by 24 hours.
French, Brazilian and other officials had earlier complained about the US-run airport's refusal to allow their supply planes to land. A World Food Program official told The New York Times that the Americans' priorities were out of sync, allowing too many US military flights and too few aid deliveries.
The US has completely taken over Port-au-Prince airspace and incoming flights have to register with Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, said Chief Master Sgt. Ty Foster, Air Force spokesman here.
"You won't have the stray cats and dogs allowed to come into the airspace and clog it up," he said.
On Sunday, WFP spokesman Gregory Barrow in Rome was more positive, speaking of "extremely close cooperation" with the US at the airport. But a coordinator here for Spain's international development agency, Daniel Martin, complained that their aid supplies had been diverted to Santo Domingo, and Doctors Without Borders spokesman Jason Cone said the US military needed "to be clear on its prioritization of medical supplies and equipment."
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 US Navy crew members load water into a waiting helicopter to be distributed around various drop-off spots in Port-au-Prince January 16, 2010. [Agencies] |
The on-the-ground US commander in Haiti, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, acknowledged the bottleneck problem. "We're working aggressively to open up other ways to get in here. The ports are part of that," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
The White House said Sunday the US Coast Guard ship Oak had arrived at Port-au-Prince harbor, rendered useless for incoming aid because of quake damage, and would use heavy cranes and other equipment to make the port functional.
Other US help was on the way: Some 2,000 Marines should arrive off Haiti on Monday, Keen said, reinforcing 1,000 US troops on the ground.
The general reported "increasing incidents of violence," as a weakened Haitian police force and U.N. peacekeeping contingent were overwhelmed.
