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Qatar joins international aid effort for Haiti
DOHA/PORT-AU-PRINCE: Qatar yesterday sent a C-17 strategic transport aircraft carrying 50 tons of aid to Haiti as troops and planeloads of food and medicine streamed into a traumatised nation still rattled by aftershocks from the earthquake that flattened homes and government buildings and buried countless people.
The head of the Qatari rescue team, Captain Mubarak Sherida Al Kaabi, said the team included 26 members from the Qatari armed forces, the internal security force (Lekhwiya), police forces, and the Hamad Medical Corporation.
The team will provide its services in the devastated capital, Port-au-Prince, and other affected areas. It will establish a field hospital to provide medical assistance to the quake victims.
The Haitian Red Cross said it believed 45,000 to 50,000 people had died and three million more — one-third of Haiti’s population — were hurt or left homeless by the 7.0 magnitude quake that hit its impoverished capital on Tuesday.
The quake flattened buildings across entire hillsides and many people were still trapped alive in the rubble after two days, with little sign of organised rescue efforts. About 1,500 corpses were piled up outside the main hospital and bodies littered many streets.
Planes full of supplies arrived at the Port-au-Prince airport faster than ground crews could unload them and aviation authorities restricted flights from US airspace for fear planes would run out of fuel while waiting to land.
The influx of aid had yet to reach shell-shocked Haitians who wandered the broken streets of Port-au-Prince, searching desperately for water, food and medical help.
“Money is worth nothing right now, water is the currency,” one foreign aid worker said.
Looters swarmed a broken supermarket in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince, carrying out electronics and bags of rice unchallenged. Others siphoned gasoline from a wrecked tanker.
“All the policemen are busy rescuing and burying their own families,” said tile factory owner Manuel Deheusch. “They don’t have the time to patrol the streets.”
The United States was sending 3,500 soldiers, 300 medical personnel, several ships and a contingent of Marines. Canadian military ships with 500 personnel were on the way and a disaster aid team had already arrived.
The United States pledged long-term US help for the crippled Haitian government. Parliament, the national palace, and many government ministry buildings collapsed and it was unclear how many lawmakers survived. The main prison also fell, allowing dangerous criminals to escape.
There were few signs of organised rescue operations to free those trapped in debris, and doctors in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, were ill-equipped to treat the injured.
Makeshift tents were strung everywhere and Haitians at one informal camp approached a journalist shouting “water, water” in a multitude of languages.
Groups of women who slept in the streets overnight sang religious songs in the dark and prayed for the dead.
Sobs and wailing erupted each time someone died but aftershocks interrupted the mourning, sending panicked people running away from walls.
Bodies lay all around the hilly city, and people covered their noses with cloth to try to block the stench. Corpses were delivered by the pickup truck load to the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, where hospital director Guy LaRoche estimated the bodies piled outside the morgue numbered 1,500.
The Haitian Red Cross had run out of body bags and the International Committee of the Red Cross was sending more. Brazil, whose troops make up part of the UN peacekeeping force, proposed setting up an emergency cemetery and the United States sent mortuary teams.
Haitians clawed at chunks of concrete with bare hands and sledgehammers, trying to free those buried alive.
The UN said at least 36 members of its 9,000-strong peacekeeping mission had been killed and scores were still missing. Brazil said 14 of its soldiers were among the dead.
Fourteen guests and workers were pulled out alive from the landmark Montana Hotel, which was largely flattened.
Aid distribution was hampered because roads were blocked by rubble and smashed cars, normal communications were cut off, and relief agencies’ offices were damaged and their staff dead or missing.
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