Extent of Haiti destruction clear
The destruction caused at the epicentre of Tuesday's earthquake in Haiti is even more dramatic than in the ruined capital, a BBC correspondent says.
Tens of thousands of people there are living in the open, and the population is in profound shock, he says.
Survivors in the capital, Port-au-Prince, have become desperate as they wait for aid gradually being handed out under an international relief effort.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is due to arrive in Haiti on Sunday.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the first senior Western official to arrive in Haiti on Saturday.
She told Haitians that the US would be "here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead", asserting that "Haiti can come back even better and stronger in the future".
The US has launched what President Barack Obama called "one of the largest relief efforts in its history" following the earthquake, which killed tens of thousands of people and left many more homeless.
'No help'
The BBC's Mark Doyle described the scene at the epicentre of the earthquake, in and around Leogane, as apocalyptic.
People from the town, about 19km (12 miles) west of Port-au-Prince, had taken refuge in the surrounding sugarcane fields or mangrove swamps, he said.
One survivor said he had come to Haiti from America for his mother's funeral, only for his wife to be killed in the earthquake. He said that so far people in the area had received no help of any kind.
"We don't have any aid, nothing at all," he said. "No food, no water, no medical, no doctors."
The UN said up to 90% of the buildings in Leogane had been damaged.
"It's the very epicentre of the earthquake, and many, many thousands are dead," said David Orr, a spokesman for the UN World Food Programme.
"Nearly every house was destroyed here. The military are talking about 20,000 to 30,000 dead."
Logistical challenges
The UN has launched an appeal for $562m (£346m) intended to help three million people for six months, while some two million people are thought to need emergency relief.
But while huge quantities of aid have been arriving, efforts to distribute it have been hampered by severe logistical challenges.
The airport has been congested, the port badly damaged, and the limited network of roads blocked with debris.
Many people have been leaving Port-au-Prince in search of food, water and medicine.
The UN has also reported a rise in the number of people trying to cross into the neighbouring Dominican Republic, and an influx into Haiti's northern cities.
David Wimhurst, a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti, said aid was being delivered as quickly as possible.
"Aid is going out but it's simply impossible in 24 hours to bring in enough aid to instantly feed all these people, many of whom are in places that are inaccessible," he said.
Reports from Port-au-Prince on Saturday indicated that a crowd of about 1,000 people was involved in a violent fight over goods in one of the city's central commercial streets.
But a senior UN offcial played down the incidents of violence, telling the BBC that the security situation in Haiti was calm, minor incidents apart.
Country 'decapitated'
Estimates of how many people died following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday have varied.
The Pan American Health Organization put the death toll at 50,000-100,000, while Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said 100,000 "would seem a minimum".
He said more than 25,000 bodies had been collected and buried. Rescue workers have been racing against time to find survivors still trapped under the rubble.
One woman, Saint-Helene Jean-Louis, was pulled out alive from the ruined University of Port-au-Prince on Saturday where she had been trapped for 97 hours.
A UN official has said aid workers are dealing with a disaster "like no other" in UN memory because the country had been "decapitated".
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said his house had been destroyed and he had been sleeping in his car, while ministers had nowhere to hold meetings.
"For the moment, we are trying to save our employees who are still stuck under the rubble," he said. "We can hear their voices."
The UN itself lost at least 40 employees in the earthquake, and confirmed on Saturday that the head of its mission in Haiti had been found dead in the rubble of its headquarters.
No comments:
Post a Comment