The first wave of 10,000 American troops landed in Port-au-Prince today hoping to halt the earthquake-ravaged city’s descent into chaos.
On a fourth day of desperate food and water shortages, looters armed with machetes roamed streets in the centre of Haiti’s capital while Government officials began to bury thousands of bodies in mass graves. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.
A temporary United Nations command centre was set up at the airport this morning to replace the organisation’s headquarters which collapsed during the catastrophic tremor. Ann Barnes, 59, a UN worker from Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, is among those unaccounted for since the building was destroyed.
As increasingly angry Haitians waited for help, there were occasional glimmers of hope for the missing. A two-year-old boy was rescued from the rubble of his home after surviving, apparently unscathed, for more than two days.
Redjeson Hausteen Claude looked stunned and bewildered as he was pulled free but broke into a broad smile of recognition as he was reunited with his ecstatic mother, Daphnee Plaisin, and father, Reginald Claude.
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While international teams of rescue workers continued to hunt through the wreckage of the city, the UN’s most critical mission was to expand the World Food Programme’s operation.
The agency, which currently feeds 8,000 survivors a day, was aiming to provide regular meals for one million people within 15 days. Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, tonight appealed for $560 million in additional emergency aid.
The enormous logistical undertaking, hampered by blocked and mangled roads, occasional electricity, little heavy lifting equipment and sporadic telephone connection, was further complicated by the unstable security situation. Reports have already emerged of looting at the UN’s main Port-au-Prince warehouse, where the agency had 15,000 tonnes of food before the quake.
An advance for the US relief effort has arrived in Haiti with the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson now off the coast and hundreds of troops on the ground. WIth thousands more soldiers on the way, it is anticipated that law and order will return to the city.
UN peacekeepers patrolling the capital said anger was rising that aid had not been distributed quickly, and warned that convoys must be guarded. There was no sign of foreign assistance entering the central area this morning, other than a US Navy helicopter flying overhead.
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Haitians sensed the potential for an explosion of lawlessness. “We’re worried that people will get a little uneasy,” said a petrol station attendant, Jean Reynol, 37.
Michel Legros, 53, who was continuing to search for seven missing relatives, said: “They are scavenging everything. What can you do?”
UN humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said peacekeepers were maintaining security in Haiti, despite the challenges.
“People have not been eating or drinking for almost 50 hours and are already in a very poor situation,” she said. “If they see a truck with something, or if they see a supermarket which has collapsed, they just rush to get something to eat.. . . It’s tense but they can cope.”
Complicating the security situation was the complete destruction of Port-au-Prince’s main prison. The International Red Cross said a few inmates died but the vast majority - 4,000 - had escaped on to the city’s streets.
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In one part of the city, desperate residents blocked streets with corpses to demand quicker relief efforts. Shaul Schwarz, a photographer for TIME magazine, said he saw at least two roadblocks formed with bodies of earthquake victims and rocks.
“They are starting to block the roads with bodies. It’s getting ugly out there. People are fed up with getting no help,” he said.
Relief flights have been arriving in the region from around the world and the United States expects 9,000 to 10,000 troops to have arrived in Haiti and off its shore by Monday to help distribute aid to earthquake victims and prevent potential rioting.
Admiral Mike Mulle, the highest-ranking US military officer, says the total American presence could rise as officers determine how much assistance may be needed
A reporter for The Times who arrived in the Haitian capital last night said that hundreds of thousands of people were sleeping in the open air, singing songs as bedtime approached for their children.
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By day, many Haitian citizens continue to scour the rubble and debris that has filled their neighbourhoods. Despite the diminishing chances of survival, tales of new survivors continue to emerge.
At least seven American survivors and one Haitian were pulled from the remains of the shattered Hotel Montana after being trapped in the dark for days.
Clinton Rabb, a Methodist missionary, asked a Times reporter to pass on a message as he was being dug out from the hotel today. “Tell my wife I deeply love her and we’re going to survive this,” he said. “And I’m praying for all those who did not survive.”
The message was delivered over a crackling phone line from Haiti although it was only afterwards that Mrs Rabb found out that her husband and his colleague had been freed after 55 hours under the rubble.
A Filipino military spokesman said that “proof of life” had been heard by rescuers sifting through the wreckage of the Hotel Christopher, the collapsed UN headquarters where about 150 United Nations staff and peacekeepers remain unaccounted for.
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In a harrowing interview with Fox News, the Haitian-born singer and music producer Wyclef Jean – who flew to the island after the quake to join the rescue effort – said he thought half a million people could die if help did not arrive soon.
“The best way I can say is that this is apocalypse,” he said. “The count is not 100,000. There at least has to be 400,000 to 500,000 people who are about to die ... We spent the day picking up dead bodies.”