PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Doctors and search dogs, troops and rescue teams flew to this devastated land of dazed, dead and dying people Thursday, finding bottlenecks everywhere, beginning at a main airport short on jet fuel and ramp space and without a control tower.
The international Red Cross estimated 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in Tuesday’s cataclysmic earthquake, based on information from the Haitian Red Cross and government officials.
Hard-pressed recovery teams resorted to using bulldozers to transport loads of bodies.
Worries mounted, meanwhile, about food and water for the survivors.
“People have been almost fighting for water,” aid worker Fevil Dubien said as he distributed water from a truck in a northern Port-au-Prince neighborhood.
From Virginia, France and China, a handful of rescue teams were able to finally help, scouring the rubble for survivors. In one “small miracle,” searchers rescued a security guard from beneath the collapsed concrete floors of the U.N. peacekeeping headquarters, where many others were entombed.
But the silence of the dead was overwhelming in a city where uncounted bodies littered the streets in the 80-degree heat, and dust-caked arms and legs reached, lifeless, from the ruins. Outside the General Hospital morgue, hundreds of collected corpses blanketed the parking lot, as grief-stricken people searched among them for loved ones. Brazilian U.N. peacekeepers, key to city security, were trying to organize mass burials.
Patience already was wearing thin among the poorest who were waiting for aid, said David Wimhurst, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission.
“They want us to provide them with help, which is, of course, what we want to do,” he said. But they see U.N. vehicles patrolling the streets to maintain calm, and not delivering aid, and “they’re slowly getting more angry and impatient,” he said.
In Washington, President Barack Obama announced “one of the largest relief efforts in our recent history,” starting with $100 million in aid. The U.S. Southern Command reported the first 100 of a planned 900 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division landed in Haiti from North Carolina on Thursday to support disaster relief, to be followed this weekend by more than 2,000 Marines. The American troops “will relieve pressure” on overworked U.N. elements, Wimhurst said.
From Europe, Asia and the Americas, other governments, the U.N. and private aid groups were sending planeloads of high-energy biscuits and other food, tons of water, tents, blankets, water-purification gear, heavy equipment for removing debris, helicopters and other transport, and teams of hundreds of search-and-rescue, medical and other specialists.
But two days after much of this ramshackle city was shattered, the global helping hand was slowed by the poor roads, airport and seaport of a wretchedly poor nation.
About 60 aid flights had arrived by midday Thursday, but they then had to contend with the chokepoint of an overloaded Toussaint L’Ouverture International Airport. At midday, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was temporarily halting all civilian flights from the U.S. at Haiti’s request because the airport was jammed and jet fuel was limited for return flights. The control tower was destroyed in Tuesday’s quake, complicating air traffic.
Civilian relief flights were later allowed to resume.
“There’s only so much concrete (for parking planes),” U.S. Air Force Col. Buck Elton said at the airport. “It’s a constant puzzle of trying to move aircraft in and out.”
Teams that did land had to navigate Haiti’s inadequate roads, sometimes blocked by debris or by quake survivors looking for safe open areas as aftershocks still rumbled through the city.
The U.N. World Food Program said the quake-damaged seaport made ship deliveries of aid impossible.
The looting of shops that broke out after the magnitude-7.0 quake struck late Tuesday afternoon added to concerns. The Brazilian military warned aid convoys to add security to guard against looting by the desperate population.
“There is no other way to get provisions,” American Red Cross representative Matt Marek said of the store looting. “Even if you have money, those resources are going to be exhausted in a few days.”
Red Cross officials have estimated one-third of Haiti’s 9 million people are in need of aid.
Across the sprawling, hilly city of Port-au-Prince, people milled about in open areas, hopeful for help, sometimes setting up camps amid piles of salvaged goods, including food scavenged from the rubble. Small groups by roadsides could be seen burying dead. Other dust-covered bodies were being dragged down streets, toward hospitals where relatives hoped to leave them. Countless remained unburied and stacked, with children’s bodies — their tiny feet poking from blankets — lying atop mothers.
How to help
Want to help victims of the earthquake in Haiti? Aid organizations say cash donations are best. Here are some of the many that are accepting contributions:
American Friends Service Committee: 888-588-2372
American Red Cross: 800-HELP-NOW
CARE: 800-521-CARE
Catholic Relief Services: 877-HELP-CRS
Habitat for Humanity: 800-422-4828
Operation Blessing: 800-730-2537
Oxfam America: 800-778-9326
Project CURE: 303-792-0729
Save the Children: 800-728-3843
United Way: 703-836-7112
UNICEF: 800-4UNICEF
For a list of many other agencies, go to /earthquake-haiti
