PORT-AU-PRINCE: The delay in getting water, food and shelter to the desperate population of Haiti’s capital is raising “the risk of riots,” Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim warned Friday after visiting the quake-hit city. “We are worried about security,” he bluntly told reporters on arrival in Brasilia after a two-day stay in Port-au-Prince.
“As long as the people are hungry and thirsty, as long as we haven’t fixed the problem of shelter, we run the risk of riots,” he said.
Thousands of people left hurt or homeless in Haiti’s earthquake spent a third night lying on sidewalks and clamored for help as their despair turned to anger and aftershocks rippled through the wrecked city.
Governments across the world are pouring relief supplies and medical teams into the quake-hit Caribbean state — already the poorest in the Western Hemi-sphere. But huge logistical hurdles and the sheer scale of the destruction mean aid is still not reaching hundreds of thousands of hurt and homeless people in the devastated coastal capital.
“These people have lost everything. They have nothing. They have been waiting for two days now. No one is helping us. Please bring us water or people will die soon,” said Renelde Lamarque, who has opened his home yard to about 500 quake victims in the devastated Fort National neighborhood.
Raggedly dressed survivors held out their arms to a reporter, begging for food and water.
Tens of thousands are feared dead from Tuesday’s quake and dangerous aftershocks still ripple every few hours through the city, dislodging debris and increasing the anguish of people already traumatized by death and injury on a massive scale.
A big aftershock jolted buildings at about 5 a.m. (1000 GMT) on Friday, causing fresh alarm. Relief workers said some aid was trickling through to people but in haphazard fashion, and they said coordination was desperately needed. “Some aid is slowly getting through, but not to many people,” said Margaret Aguirre, a senior official with International Medical Corps.
But as the risk of starvation and disease increased in shattered streets strewn with rubble, garbage and rotting bodies, most Haitians said they had still received nothing.
“I haven’t eaten since the day before yesterday, we’ve lost our house, we’ve nothing to eat, nobody has come, we’ve seen nobody, not even a minister or a senator,” said Bertilie Francis, 43, who was with her three children. “We are here by the Grace of God, nobody else,” she said.
In one part of Port-au-Prince on Thursday, desperate Haitians blocked streets with corpses in a protest to demand quicker relief efforts, witnesses said.
Aguirre said aid agencies were discussing setting up a central refugee camp to try to group a multitude of victims’ settlements springing up all over Port-au Prince.
“The key is the coordination. So many relief workers are just out of the picture. We want to avoid people just running round doing their own thing,” she said.
In a sign that international relief efforts cut across ideological differences, communist-led Cuba agreed to let the US military use restricted Cuban air space for medical evacuation flights carrying Haitian earthquake victims, sharply reducing the flight time to Miami, a US official said.
Paratroopers from the US Army’s 82nd Airborne division set up base at the airport in Haiti’s quake-devastated capital Port au Prince on Friday and began shipping in heavy equipment.
