PORT-AU-PRINCE: The search for survivors of Haiti’s killer earthquake started to wind down and Haiti’s government said on Thursday it would move some 400,000 homeless to new villages to be built outside the wrecked capital.
The seaport in Port-au-Prince had been repaired enough to reopen for limited aid shipments, and a Dutch naval vessel was unloading pallets of water, juice and shelf-stable milk onto trucks at the pier.
Aid was more plentiful but still inadequate to feed and shelter the masses left homeless and injured by the 7.0 magnitude quake that rocked Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, on Jan. 12 and killed as many as 200,000 people.
“It’s miserable here. It’s dirty and it’s boring,” said Judeline Pierre-Rose, 12, camped in a park across from the collapsed national palace. “People go to the toilet everywhere here and I’m scared of getting sick.”
Teams from Brazil, the United States and Chile were still working with sniffer dogs at the collapsed Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince, where a whiteboard listed the names of 10 people found dead and 20 more still missing inside. Crews had treaded gingerly, shifting rubble by hand, but were switching to heavy machinery to dig up the bulk of the hotel.
Around 12,000 US military personnel are in Haiti and on ships offshore. The United Nations is adding 2,000 troops and 1,500 police to the 9,000-member peacekeeping mission in Haiti.
Between 1 million and 1.5 million Haitians were left homeless by the earthquake and Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime said some 400,000 of them would be moved to new villages to be set up outside the capital.
Banks were to reopen on Friday in the provinces and on Saturday in Port-au-Prince, giving most Haitians their first access to cash since the quake hit, Commerce Minister Josseline Colimon Fethiere told Reuters.
Some bank branches were demolished in the earthquake but the banks planned to share customers, and to stay open on Sunday, she said.
LONG-TERM REBUILDING The Haitian government and its international partners turned their focus to long-term rebuilding of a nation that was poor and chaotic even before the earthquake.
“Are we satisfied with the job we are doing? Definitely not,” said Jon Andrus, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization.
“But progress is being made. Think of what we started with when the world came crashing down on Haiti. No roads, only rubble and dead bodies. No communication, only death and despair.” Most of the basics of city life were still missing or barely functional in Port-au-Prince. Hospitals were overwhelmed and doctors lacked anesthesia, forcing them to operate on wide-awake patients with only local painkillers.
Doctors Without Borders said there were 10- to 12-day backlogs of patients at some of its surgical sites and they were seeing infections of untreated wounds.
“Some victims are already dying of sepsis,” the group said.
Aid groups brought in mobile kitchens and bakeries but struggled to feed the hungry. The World Food Program estimated there were 200 homeless encampments in Port-au-Prince alone and urged the government to begin consolidating them to streamline aid distribution.
“We will probably need to feed between 1 to 2 million but it depends on the rate at which people leave the city,” said Thiry Benoit, WFP’s deputy country representative in Haiti.
The city’s water system was only partially functional but tanker trucks began to deliver water to makeshift camps where people lined up to fill their buckets.
The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM), distributed tents, blankets and plastic sheeting provided by Japan and Turkey, but warned that more permanent shelter would soon be needed.
Violence and looting has subsided as US troops provided security for water and food distribution and thousands of displaced Haitians heeded the government’s advice to seek shelter outside Port-au-Prince.
