haiti earthquake survivors blockade roads with piles of corpses in protest at lack of aid

8/14/2019 Haiti Earthquake Survivors Blockade Roads With Piles of Corpses in Protest at Lack of Aid

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HAITI EARTHQUAKE SURVIVORS BLOCKADE ROADS WITH PILESOF CORPSES IN PROTEST AT LACK OF AID

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Desperate Haitians have set up roadblocks of corpses in Port-au-Princeto protest at the lack of emergency aid reaching them after thecatastrophic earthquake.

Although billions of pounds have already been pledged to thedevastated country, help is only just beginning to trickle through tosurvivors.

Rescue efforts have been blighted by poor infrastructure and lack of

heavy lifting equipment - as well as the damage wrought by thedisaster.

Bodies fill the front yard of the morgue in Port-au-Prince. Survivorshave started using corpses as road blocks


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An aerial view shows a ruined cathedral after Tuesday's earthquake.Troops and planeloads of food and medicine streamed into Haiti to aida traumatized nation
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Despairing: Amid a scene of total devastation, one resident sits on achair, his head in his hand

Shaul Schwarz, a photographer for TIME magazine, said he saw at leasttwo roadblocks formed with bodies of earthquake victims and rocks.

'They are starting to block the roads with bodies. It's getting ugly outthere. People are fed up with getting no help,' he said.

There were reports of machete-wielding gangs roaming the debris-strewn streets looking for food. At times fighting broke out as theystruggled for scant supplies.

The humanitarian crisis in the capital is the worst many aid workers

have ever seen.

With streets and buildings littered with rotting corpses and filled withthe sounds of screams, some have compared it to a scene from hell.


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Miracle: Rescuers carry a three-month-old baby found alive after beingburied under rubble for two days


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Survivors gathered around bodies in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince

photographed during a joint Red Cross Red Crescent/ECHO (EuropeanCommunity Humanitarian Organization) aerial assessment mission
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Despair: Shocked crowds throng the ruined streets, many homeless,many simply afraid to go into any building


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Missing: Briton Ann Barnes is personal assistant to the UN policecommissioner in Haiti

Rezene Tesfamariam, Haiti director of Plan International, describedpeople using bare hands shovels and pick axes to reach people stilltrapped beneath collapsed buildings.

He said: "There are people still alive underneath, you can hear themcrying for help, but time is running out. It is beyond the means ofindividuals to reach them.

'They are trying move concrete with their hands. What is desperatelyneeded is proper machinery and equipment to lift the rubble.

Mr Tesfamariam, who lost his own home in the quake, described thedisaster was the worst he had witnessed in his many years as an aidworker.

'I have seen refugees fleeing war and cyclones hitting villages, but inthose cases at least you have time to run away,' he said.


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'In just a few seconds so many lives were wiped out. Port-au-Princelooks like it has been bombed.

'My house has been destroyed. I went back there (in the aftermath)and a neighbor called my name. She said there were children under

the rubble. I shouted to them and they called back.

'I reported it to the UN so they would know where to come and getthem out but there are people everywhere crying out for help. It is onething I will never be able forget.'

Thousands of injured people spent a third night twisted in pain, lyingon pavements waiting for help as their despair turned to anger.

'We've been out here waiting for three days and three nights butnothing has been done for us, not even a word of encouragement from

the president,' said Pierre Jackson, nursing his mother and sister wholay whimpering with crushed legs.

'What should we do?'
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Thousands of homeless people have set up tent cities as they wait foraid to arrive

People gather around a petrol pump seeking fuel. Petrol shortage iscausing long queues and angry customers

The Haitian Red Cross said it believed 45,000 to 50,000 people haddied and 3 million more - one third of Haiti's population - were injuredor left homeless by the 7.0 quake that hit on Tuesday.

HOW TO HELP

Donations to the DEC Haiti appeal can be made by calling 037060 60 900, through the website www.dec.org.uk or over thecounter at any post office or high street bank, quoting Freepay1449.

Cheques payable to DEC Haiti Earthquake can also been sentto PO Box 999, London, EC3A 3AA.
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Fears were growing today for British woman Ann Barnes, a PA to theUnited Nations police commissioner in Haiti.

The UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince has completely collapsed, killingmany who were inside.

Miss Barnes has been missing since the earthquake though the UN hasnot confirmed that she is among the dead.

Officials from the Foreign Office said that 30 other British nationalsliving in Port-au-Prince had been in touch and were safe and well.

The Haitian government - weak even before the disaster - has all butdisintegrated leaving the island teetering on the brink of anarchy.

Hundreds of criminals escaped when the island's main prison

collapsed. Looters swarmed unchallenged into collapsed supermarketsand warehouses, snatching electronics and bags of rice.

Shanty towns on the outskirts of the Haitian capital were flattened bythe earthquake - the worst to strike the island nation in 200 years
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James Girly, 64, of the US is brought out of a destroyed building of theMontana Hotel where he was trapped for 50 hours in Port-au-Prince

HOW BID TO SAVE TRAPPED GIRL ENDED IN TRAGEDY

Trapped beneath the crumbled remains of her home, the 9-year-old girl could be heard begging for rescue as neighborsclawed at sand and debris with their bare hands.

It had been two days since the earthquake collapsed thehouse, trapping Haryssa Keem Clerge inside the basement.

Friends and neighbors braved aftershocks to climb over therubble, one of hundreds of toppled structures teetering on the

side of a ravine.

In a city full of people desperately waiting for more help thanneighbors can muster, it never came for Haryssa.

Just hours after her screams renewed rescuers' hopes, thechild's lifeless body was finally pulled from the mass ofconcrete and twisted metal.


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Wrapped in a green bath towel, it was placed inside a loosedesk drawer. With nowhere to take it, the body was then lefton the hood of a battered Isuzu Trooper.

'There are no police, no anybody,' said the child's despairing

godmother, Kettely Clerge.

Neighbours had to hold her back as she walked toward thebuilding's winding, partially collapsed stairway, wailing: 'I wantto see her!'

A day earlier, the little girl's mother, Lauranie Jean, was pulledfrom the rubble of the same house. She lay moaning inside atent as volunteers rubbed ointment into open wounds on hersides.

The family has now taken refuge in a dirt playground - one ofhundreds of open spaces across Port-au-Prince that people arefilling each night to try to avoid the risk of aftershocks.

Officials are making increasingly desperate efforts to deal with the tensof thousands of dead.

Presidents Rene Preval said that 7,000 people were yesterday buried ina mass grave. The Haitian Red Cross has run out of body bags.

Corpses were piled on pickup trucks and delivered to the General

Hospital in Port-au-Prince, where hospital director Guy LaRocheestimated the bodies piled outside the morgue numbered 1,500.

Aid workers reported seeing children sleeping among the dead.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, presents uniquelogistical challenges for aid workers.

Ships are struggling to use the ruined port, while aid organizations saidthere appeared to be little coordination of supplies arriving at thereopened airport.

At one point planes were arriving faster than ground crews couldhandle them and US authorities had to restrict flights to Haiti for fearthey would run out of fuel before they could land.

The Haitian government said that there was no room on ramps forplanes to unload their cargo and that some planes on the ground didn'thave enough fuel to leave.


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Overhead, two dozen planes circled for more than two hours, andmany of them were diverted to Santo Domingo or Florida.

Planes were parked with their wing tips overlapping.

Haiti has little or no heavy equipment to move rubble and attemptswere being made to bring some from the neighboring DominicanRepublic, along a narrow and easily-clogged road.

Aid has been delivered or promised from 30 countries. China sent aplane carrying ten tons of tents, food and medical equipment, as wellas an earthquake rescue team.

The British government donated 6million to an appeal up by theDisasters Emergency Committee for what Gordon Brown called a'tragedy beyond imagination'.

Richard Santos, 47, of Washington, DC, speaks to a journalist in Port-au-Prince as he is attended to by a French military rescuer from theSecurity Civil after being brought out of the Montana Hotel. Frenchrescuers pulled seven Americans and one Haitian survivor
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Desperate: Two girls queue for water (left) while one family resorts to

squatting on the street

The first British search and rescue workers to reach Haiti were todayscouring the rubble for survivors.

U.S. President Barack Obama pledged an initial $100million(61.4million) for Haiti quake relief on Thursday and enlisted formerU.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to help raise more,vowing to the Haitian people: 'You will not be forsaken.'

The United States was sending 3,500 soldiers, 300 medical personnel,

several ships and 2,200 Marines to Haiti.

Nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson will arrive today toserve as a 'floating airport' for relief operations by its 19 helicopters.

Doctors in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, wereill-equipped to treat the injured.


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Survivors: Redjeson Hausteen, two, is carried from his collapsed homeby a rescue worker while Gladys Loiuis Jeune is pulled alive from therubble nearly 43 hours after Tuesday's earthquake


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An injured man in a wheelchair looks at the collapsed HaitianGovernmental taxation building

Many hospitals are too badly damaged to use, and medics struggled totreat crushed limbs and head wounds at makeshift clinics.

In the car park of the capital's L'Hopital de la Paix, those awaitingtreatment lay among the dead and dying in 90f heat.

A tearful man pointed to his young daughter, her legs broken and facegashed. Her sister had died.

A little boy sobbed among the bodies while two injured women, theirlegs crushed, propped each other up.


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Sarlah Chand ,65, smiles as search and rescue workers tend to herafter they rescued her from under the rubble of what is left of the HotelMontana more than 50 hours after the massive earthquake
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Ppolice officers from the Philippines search for colleagues who may betrapped in the rubble of the UN Police Headquarters in Port-au-Prince

In a makeshift hospital at the Hotel Villa Creole Margaret Germaine-Doillard, a French teacher in her 40s, lay on the ground drifting in andout of consciousness.

She was on a second-floor balcony of her school when the earthquakestruck, celebrating a belated Christmas party with more than 300students and teachers.

There is no way to know how many died at St-Louis de Gonzague, aprestigious Roman Catholic school where some of Haiti's leaders havestudied, including former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.

Germaine-Doillard said she knew of only about 10 students, severalteachers and the school's principal who survived.
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As she lay in the 80-degree heat, her thoughts remained with herpupils.

'We couldn't save the students,' she murmured. 'We couldn't save thestudents.'

THE GOOGLE IMAGES THAT SHOW SCALE OF DISASTER

Google have also released satellite images of the devastation causedin Haiti, after being asked by relief organizations and users to provideup to date images of the country.

The pictures show the amount of damage caused to building in thePort-au-Prince, as well as the destruction caused to the nationalpalace.


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Before (left) and after satellite images released by Google Maps andGeoEye after the earthquake


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Satellite images show the damage caused to a large section of theNational Palace in the 7.0 quake

In a blog post, Dylan Lorimer and Jessica Pfund of the Google MapMaker team wrote: 'We hope that Google Map Maker can also play arole in disaster relief efforts.

'Today, we have made this Map Maker data for Haiti available to theUN in its raw form for the earthquake relief efforts.'


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These before and after pictures of the Sylvio Cator Stadium in Haitishow the earthquake has destroyed part of the building and left the

ground strewn with debris

haiti earthquake survivors blockade roads with piles of corpses in protest at lack of aid

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