Aid flows a bit more quickly into Haiti
LES CAYES, Haiti — Relief for the victims of a powerful earthquake and tropical storm began ramnping up on Thursday, but Haiti’s entrenched poverty, insecurity and lack of basic infrastructure were still presenting huge challenges to getting food and urgent medical care to all those who need it.
Private relief supplies and shipments from the U.S. government and others were arriving in the southwestern peninsula where the weekend quake struck, killing more than 2,100 people. But the need was extreme, made worse by the rain from Tropical Storm Grace, and people were growing frustrated with the slow pace.
Adding to the problems, a major hospital in the capital of Portau-Prince, where injured from the earthquake zone in the southwestern peninsula were being sent, was closed Thursday for a two-day shutdown to protest the kidnapping of two doctors, including one of the country’s few orthopedic surgeons.
The abductions dealt a major blow to attempts to control criminal violence that has threatened disaster response efforts in Portau-Prince.
Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency late Wednesday raised the number of deaths from the earthquake to 2,189 and said 12,268 people were injured. An estimated 300 people
are still missing, said Serge Chery, head of civil defense for the Southern Province, which includes Les Cayes.
The magnitude 7.2 earthquake damaged or destroyed more than 100,000 homes, leaving about 30,000 families homeless, according to official estimates. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches also were demolished or badly damaged.
The U.S. has deployed several heavy-lift helicopters and other aircraft to move relief supplies and personnel to the disaster zone and has dispatched the USS Arlington to provide additional transportation and medical capabilities, Maj. General Hank Taylor told reporters at the Pentagon.
One of the U.S. helicopters landed Thursday in Les Cayes with equipment, medicine and volunteers, including some from the aid group Samaritan’s Purse. Monte Oitker, a biomedical technician with the organization, said volunteers were prepared to operate a selfcontained hospital unit, capable of handling a variety of orthopedic procedures.
Distributing aid to the thousands left homeless will be more challenging.
Mr. Chery said officials are hoping to start clearing sites where homes were destroyed to allow residents to build temporary shelters.
“It will be easier to distribute aid if people are living at their addresses, rather than in a tent,” he said.
Tension over the slow distribution of aid has become increasingly evident in the area hit hardest by Saturday’s quake. At the small airport in the southwestern town of Les Cayes, people thronged a perimeter fence Wednesday as aid was loaded into trucks and police fired warning shots to disperse a crowd of young men.
Angry crowds also massed at collapsed buildings in the city, demanding tarps to create temporary shelters after Grace’s heavy rain.
International aid workers said hospitals in the worst-hit areas are mostly incapacitated, requiring many to be moved to the capital for treatment. But reaching Port-auPrince from the southwest is difficult under normal conditions because of poor roads and gangs along the route.
Even with a supposed gang truce following the earthquake, kidnapping remains a threat — underscored by the seizure of the two doctors working at the private Bernard Mevs Hospital in Port-au-Prince, where about 50 quake victims were being treated.
And another problem emerged in the quake-damaged southern provinces, where national police said villagers put up barricades on the roads to prevent aid from getting through, arguing that they need help too.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry said Wednesday that his administration will try not to “repeat history on the mismanagement and coordination of aid,” a reference to the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, when the government and international partners struggled to channel help to the needy amid the widespread destruction and misery.