Aid workers race to bring supplies to survivors

ONE OF the most extensive relief operations ever mounted continued yesterday as aid workers raced to bring vital supplies to hundreds of thousands of Haitians left injured and homeless by last Tuesday’s earthquake.

With survivors still being pulled from collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince five days after the disaster struck, logistical problems continued to impede efforts to reach many thousands waiting for food, water and medical treatment.

“I’m going there with a very heavy heart. This is one of the worst humanitarian crises in decades. The damage, destruction, loss of life is just overwhelming,” UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said as he boarded a flight for Haiti yesterday.

The UN was feeding 40,000 people a day and hoped to increase that to one million within two weeks, he said. “The challenge at this time is how to co-ordinate all of this outpouring of assistance.”

The UN mission responsible for security in Haiti lost at least 40 of its members when its headquarters collapsed. It was confirmed at the weekend that the mission’s chief, Hedi Annabi of Tunisia, his deputy, Luiz Carlos da Costa of Brazil, and the UN police commissioner in Haiti, Doug Coates of Canada, were among the dead.

The Haitian government, whose institutions have been crippled by the quake, gave the US military control over the capital’s airport to guide aid flights arriving from around the world.

Dozens of countries have sent aircraft with rescue teams, doctors, field hospitals, food, medicine and other supplies, but arriving aircraft faced severe congestion and fuel shortages at the airport.

Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity with 800 staff in Haiti, complained that one of its cargo aircraft was diverted to neighbouring Dominican Republic, forcing it to carry emergency supplies into Haiti over land.

“Everything in Haiti is broken. All the ministries are fallen. There is not one person in the country without a friend or family member dead,” said Haiti’s information minister, Marie Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue. “When they say the government is not fast, we are truly doing our best.”

With the earthquake having destroyed the presidential palace and knocked out communications and power, Haitian president René Préval has been living at the judicial police headquarters and holding cabinet meetings outside.

As the scale of devastation became clearer, foreign governments pledged to help the impoverished Caribbean country in its long-term reconstruction.

“We’re moving forward with one of the largest relief efforts in our history to save lives and deliver relief that averts an even larger catastrophe,” said US president Barack Obama, flanked at the White House by predecessors George W Bush and Bill Clinton, who will lead a fundraising drive.

During a visit to Port-au-Prince, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton told Haitians the US would ensure their country emerged “stronger and better” from the disaster.

“We will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead,” she said after meeting Mr Préval at the airport.

EU ministers are to call for an international conference to help Haiti when they gather at an emergency meeting today. The EU’s new foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, will chair the meeting of development ministers.

In Port-au-Prince, meanwhile, concern was rising over the risk of disease. Trucks piled with corpses carried bodies to mass graves outside the city, but thousands more were believed to be still buried beneath rubble. Haitian interior minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aimé said about 50,000 bodies had already been collected.