January 16, 2010|By Sun news services
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — - Pushed to the edge of desperation, earthquake-ravaged Haitians dumped bodies into mass graves and begged for water and food Friday amid fear that time is running out to avoid chaos and to rescue anyone still alive in the wreckage.
The U.S. military brought some relief, taking control of the airport, helping coordinate flights bringing in aid and evacuating foreigners and the injured. Medical teams, meanwhile, set up makeshift hospitals, workers started to clear the streets of corpses and water was being distributed in pockets of the city.
But the task was enormous.
Aid workers and authorities warned that unless they can quickly get aid to the people, Port-au-Prince will degenerate into lawlessness.
There were reports of isolated looting as young men walked through downtown with machetes, and robbers reportedly shot one man whose body was left on the street. Survivors also fought each other for food pulled from the debris.
"I'm getting the sense that if the situation doesn't get sorted [out] real soon, it will devolve into chaos," said Steve Matthews, a veteran relief worker with the Christian aid organization World Vision.
Time also was running out to rescue anyone who may still be alive in the many buildings in Port-au-Prince that collapsed in Tuesday's magnitude 7.0 quake.
An Australian TV crew pulled a healthy 16-month-old girl from the wreckage of her house Friday - about 68 hours after the earthquake struck. In a collapsed house, neighbors and reporters heard a cry and found an air pocket: Part of the top floor had been held up by a cabinet.
"I could see a dead body that was there, sort of on top of the cabinet; I could hear the baby on the left side of the body screaming," said David Celestino of the Dominican Republic, who had been working with the TV crew.
Although her parents were dead, Winnie Tilin survived with only scratches and soon was in the arms of her uncle, whose pregnant wife was killed.
"I have to consider her like my baby, because mine is passed," Frantz Tilin told the Associated Press.
As temperatures rose into the high 80s, the sickly smell of the dead lingered over Port-au-Prince, where countless bodies remained in the streets. Hundreds of bloated corpses were stacked outside the city morgue, and limbs protruded from crushed schools and homes.
At a cemetery outside the city, trucks dumped bodies into a mass grave. Elsewhere, people pulled a box filled with bodies along a road, then used a front-end loader to lift the box and tip it into a large metal trash bin. South of the capital, workers burned more than 2,000 bodies in a trash dump.
The Red Cross estimates 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed. A third of Haiti's 9 million people may be in need of aid.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would go to Haiti today to inspect the damage and meet with President Rene Preval and other officials. Clinton, who will travel with USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah, said she wants to convey "our long-term, unwavering support, solidarity and sympathies."
President Barack Obama approved "Temporary Protected Status" for Haitians, which will allow them to stay and work in the United States and send money home to their loved ones. The announcement followed an earlier order from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who temporarily halted deportations, allowing 30,000 Haitians with expulsion orders to remain in the U.S.
The effort to get aid to the victims has been stymied by blocked roads, congestion at the airport, limited equipment and other obstacles. United Nations peacekeepers patrolling the capital said popular anger was rising, warning aid convoys to add security to guard against looting.
"Even distributing food or water is very dangerous. People are desperate and will fight to death for a cup of water," said Tom Osbeck, an Indiana missionary whose Protestant-run Jesus in Haiti Ministry operates a school north of Port-au-Prince.
Tempers flared at one of the capital's functioning gas stations as drivers tried to jockey their dusty cars into line. An armed guard brandishing a shotgun intervened to keep motorists from coming to blows.
Grocery stores were looted clean, according to Emilia Casella of the U.N. World Food Program. She said the WFP would start handing out 6,000 tons of food recovered from a damaged warehouse in the city's Cite Soleil slum and was preparing shipments of enough ready-to-eat meals to feed 2 million for a month.
The U.S. military has several hundred personnel on the ground, including more than 100 troops from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division. Hundreds of sailors, meanwhile, pulled into Port-au-Prince harbor on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.
