Huge challenge for aid workers amid the devastation of Haiti

DESPERATELY needed supplies and rescue workers have begun to reach Haiti from around the world but aid groups face a massive challenge getting to quake survivors amid the devastation.

As both Gordon Brown and Barack Obama pledged support, the United Nations warned last night the relief effort would be a “logistical nightmare”.

Ship deliveries to its capital Port-au-Prince are impossible because of earthquake damage. The airport has opened but struggled to handle flights carrying experts and aid yesterday with one of the first planes to arrive taking more than six hours to unload because of a lack of equipment.

In the streets of the capital survivors set up camps amid piles of salvaged goods, including food scavenged from the rubble.

The earthquake has devastated Haiti’s hospitals with at least eight in Port-au-Prince severely damaged.

The World Health Organisation warned this makes it nearly impossible to treat the thousands of injured or prevent outbreaks of disease.

Aid group Doctors Without Borders have treated wounded at two hospitals that withstood the quake and set up tent clinics elsewhere to replace damaged facilities.

Calls to emergency services were not getting through last night because the country’s phone networks were still not working.

Looting began immediately after the quake, with people carrying food from collapsed buildings, but aid workers said disturbances were rare.

However experts say law enforcement was stretched thin even before the quake and would be ill-equipped to deal with major unrest.

In Petionville, next to the capital, people dug through a collapsed shopping centre, tossing aside mattresses and office supplies. More than a dozen cars were entombed, including a UN truck.

Nearby, about 200 survivors, including many children, huddled in a theatre car park using sheets to rig makeshift tents and shield themselves from the sun while police carried the injured in their pickup trucks and other survivors took people to hospitals in wheelbarrows and on doors used as stretchers.

Eye witnesses said there was little evidence of any organised relief effort and with many of the country’s hospitals destroyed or damaged, doctors also warned that more people will die unless aid gets through. “This is much worse than a hurricane,” said Jimitre Coquillon, a doctor’s assistant working at a triage centre set up in a hotel parking lot. “There’s no water. There’s nothing. Thirsty people are going to die.”

Cuba, which already had more than 300 doctors in Haiti, treated injured in field hospitals

Britain’s International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said: “Haiti is a desperately difficult country. About half the population lives on less than a dollar a day, and the scenes we witnessed yesterday would challenge even the strongest of governments.

“My ambassador told me there was a very strange atmosphere in the city today. Many people are not willing to go back into buildings. So there are not just bodies in the streets but people are actually living on the streets at the moment.”

Cedric Perus, Oxfam’s humanitarian co-ordinator in Port-au-Prince, said: “There are bodies all over the city. People have nowhere to put them so they wrap them in sheets and cardboard in the hope that the authorities will pick them up. People have also piled bodies in front of the city’s main hospitals.

“Our immediate priorities will be providing safe water and shelter material for the people who have lost their homes.” Oxfam sent six emergency specialists from the UK to Haiti yesterday.

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