Shattered city government in quake-ravaged Port-au-Prince in need of help itself

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By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 20, 2010; A09

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- No one can find the administration director. The facilities chief hasn't checked in.

City Hall is now a skeletal hulk of concrete and stucco, sagging grotesquely to the left. In that ruined building are lists that Edouard Laurole, Port-au-Prince's human resources director, wants badly to unearth. Lists of employees, phone numbers, addresses and passwords, all lost since last week's earthquake.

"This is awful," Laurole says heavily, pressing a palm against his brow.

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In the wretched chaos of Port-au-Prince, Laurole and a few others are trying vainly to reconstitute a scattered and shattered city government responsible for nearly a million people, slightly fewer than half of the residents of the metropolitan area. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to live in the streets and are desperate for assistance. But before the city can take care of its people, the city government has to fix itself.

City officials venture cautiously into the streets, knowing they will quickly be surrounded by hungry, desperate residents and fearing they could become the targets of pent-up rage. Across the street from City Hall, Lyndsay Jason, the mayor's wife, pleads into a cellphone: "I'm not going out there by myself," she says. "I need some security."

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Only a fraction of city employees have working cellphones. The city has no municipal gasoline reserve, so its crews wait in long lines for gas -- like everyone else. And it is down to only a handful of functioning vehicles. City officials need many things, but right now what they really need is a place to hold a planning meeting.

For days, they have conducted the affairs of Haiti's capital from a folding table on the stone-paved driveway of a borrowed mansion in Canape Vert, a once-lush Port-au-Prince neighborhood now overrun with cinder-block shacks. The stench of rotting bodies outside the mansion's walls mixes with the perfume of the flowering trees inside. At the mansion, the officials find that their welcome is wearing thin.

"What is difficult is to make them understand that they have to clean up after themselves," says Yamily Saint Louis, the homeowner. "Nothing is organized."

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So Laurole sets off, flip-flops slapping the pavement of the driveway, searching for a more suitable venue. He squeezes into a borrowed Suzuki Sidekick with four employees and jams the clutch hard. "We have to see who is alive," he tells the city employees in the back seat. "We have to find a safe place to meet. We have to find some financial support."

They sputter to a stop outside a city annex building on the Champ de Mars that faces a park, where thousands of Haitians now live in conditions that grow more fetid and squalid with each passing day. Laurole walks delicately up the annex stairs, turning to warn his colleagues, "Don't step too hard!"

"This looks good to me," he says optimistically, seemingly oblivious to the jagged cracks running down the building's facade and to the collapsed balcony. "Get me the engineer!"

An official takes the onus

"At this point, I'm the boss," Laurole says, explaining that he had been unable to reach the mayor. "Normally this would not be my responsibility. But someone has to take charge." He says he draws inspiration from Rudolph W. Giuliani's efforts as mayor of New York in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

An hour later, the engineer pulls up. Laurent Rousseau glances at the building, turns to Laurole and says: "I'm not going in there. My house didn't go down. I'm already saved. I'm not going to put my head on the chopping block."

Laurole, a tall 48-year-old wearing cargo shorts and a sleeveless gray T-shirt, yanks the surgical mask from his mouth. "Everyone here is scared!" he says to no one in particular, spinning on his heels. He nudges Rousseau into the building and waits outside.

Laurole recognizes the face of a city employee in a pickup truck inching by in traffic. "I need you!" Laurole yells. But the employee turns his head.

"I hate that guy!" Laurole says.

Moments later, a gaunt woman is tapping Laurole's shoulder, complaining that the city government is doing nothing for her. He listens patiently for five minutes but finally can't take it anymore: "Go ask your president," he says sarcastically, stomping away.

No place for city business

Port-au-Prince is largely dependent on the national government for money and other resources, and there is always tension between the two governments. For instance, Port-au-Prince employs garbage collectors, but Laurole says the law allows the city only to pile up garbage, while the national government owns the trucks that collect trash.

"There's no coordination," he says. Indeed, garbage-strewn streets are the norm in Port-au-Prince, but the lack of coordination -- and the mountains of waste -- are even more evident since the earthquake.

Two young men walk across the street and tell Laurole that people are beginning to suffer from diarrhea -- the sidewalks provide ample evidence. Laurole shrugs, and the two walk away.

Finally, Rousseau, the engineer, emerges from the annex building and starts writing a report, leaning on the hood of a dusty Toyota Corolla.

Laurole paces. "I need him to say this building is safe," he says.

As soon as he gets clearance, Laurole says, he will ask one of the few radio stations still functioning to announce that the meeting will take place at 10 the next morning.

He hovers over Rosseau.

"Don't push me," Rousseau says. "Don't pressure me. Let me operate."

Rousseau finishes his report but decides he wants to write a neater version, further delaying and frustrating Laurole. The engineer rewrites the entire page-long report. Satisfied with the aesthetics, he delivers the same verdict: The building is unsafe.

Laurole pivots, changing the meeting place to a borrowed room in the national government's Culture Ministry, on the opposite end of the park.

The next morning, he arrives 15 minutes early, turned out in a pressed dress shirt and slacks. A dozen city employees are waiting for him on a street median befouled by human waste -- none of them is a top official.

They scream when they see Laurole. "We haven't been paid in a month!" Primrose Delva, a 53-year-old street sweeper, screeches.

Laurole pauses to hear their complaints, then disentangles himself and marches toward the Culture Ministry's gate. A guard appears. Laurole pushes his identification card against the metal railing. He pleads. He waves his arms.

The guard is unmoved. Laurole cannot enter. No meeting today.

Virginia medical team reaches Haitian city, begins to treat patients

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By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 20, 2010; A09

JACMEL, HAITI -- After 2 1/2 days of travel, over the sea, across borders, in planes so small they had to leave most of their food and water behind, the emergency relief workers from Northern Virginia had finally arrived.

They found that the hospital courtyard in Jacmel had become a village of the injured and their families, a community living under tarps, with laundry stretched out on rubble to dry and a large black pig wandering by the ruins of the maternity ward.

Jacmel, a beautiful city on the southern coast of Haiti, known for its artists, its pastel colonial houses and its carnival, had been hit hard by the earthquake and left with almost no functioning medical care. But hope remained. Residents here were still pulling out a few people from under buildings -- alive.

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The crew from Community Coalition for Haiti, with doctors and ER nurses from Inova Fairfax Hospital, was glad to finally join the effort, after a crazy, roundabout trip full of mishaps, the same kind of journey that many relief workers faced as they tried to get into the chaos of a devastated country.

The CCH group left Washington before dawn Sunday, flew to Santiago in the Dominican Republic, then got up before dawn again to catch another flight. It was a race that ended like a flat tire at the border with Haiti on Monday.

The relief workers found themselves caught in a throng of thousands of people on market day, women weaving about with huge sacks of macaroni balancing on their heads, small boys tapping at the glass of the CCH bus, asking for food. They waited, stuck without their passports, for the trip leaders to arrive in a truck and get them through the border.

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When they finally inched across the narrow bridge to Haiti, they knew they had probably missed their chance at a flight but rushed toward the airfield at Pignon anyway. They crammed people into a pickup truck for a jolting and bruising ride over rough dirt roads through mountains, veering around goats and ditches, fording streams and rattling through small villages, with a doctor on the back clinging to the pile of medical supplies and luggage.

They missed the flight, by a long shot. The next morning, as the sun rose, a Haitian boy shooed goats off the airfield as two six-seater planes arrived to fly them to Jacmel.

Once here, they dropped their tents at the convent where they would be sleeping and headed for the hospital. They were among the first overseas medical teams to arrive.

They found patients lying on beds of bright green planks pulled from the rubble. A girl held an IV drip for her sister, who was on a bed mat, sweat pouring off of her face, which was twisted in agony.

The patients were all outside. Tarps protected them from the almonds that dropped from trees overhead. But it was unbearably hot there, with families bringing meals and living alongside the injured crammed into the small courtyard.

Close enough to reach out and touch one another, patients lay moaning as volunteers wrapped gauze around injuries.

A small boy stood, hands on his head, mouth trembling, as he watched a doctor check his sister's leg.

A woman on crutches limped up the hill toward the tarps. Another, with bandages all over her head, dropped onto a bench, whimpering softly in the midst of the crowd. Another slept on a low concrete wall covered in white dust.

And more people were waiting at the gates.

Ted Alexander, an orthopedic surgeon from Inova, stepped out from under a tarp.

"I looked at one of the guillotine amputations they did at the shoulder," he said.

He was preparing to do an amputation himself as soon as the anesthesiology equipment was hooked up. The 55-year-old woman's arm was black and necrotic, one of many injuries that had gone untreated or had been given only the crudest first aid.

Nearby, a cluster of women waited for news outside the improvised operating room. They were friends of a woman who was killed with all but one of her children when her house collapsed. One girl, her legs crushed, had survived.

Russell Seneca, chairman of the surgery department at Inova Fairfax, was with some of the doctors who had just operated on the girl. He spoke to the waiting women through a translator. "She's going to be fine," he said, and their eyes widened with amazement.

U.S. troops move into Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to help keep order, distribute aid

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By William Booth and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, January 20, 2010; A01

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Hundreds of U.S. troops surged into the epicenter of Haiti's earthquake-ravaged capital Tuesday to guard convoys and food distribution sites, while thousands more stationed themselves on ships and helicopters offshore to bolster relief and recovery efforts.

One week after a 7.0-magnitude quake crippled this city, many Haitians living on the streets have still not received any food or medical assistance from their government or the international community, but there were increasing signs that the aid effort is gaining momentum.

As the U.N. Security Council approved 3,500 additional peacekeepers for the Haiti mission, the U.S. military and other foreign forces began dropping food from planes, delivering troops by helicopter to volatile neighborhoods, and working to prepare other entry points for aid deliveries.

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U.S. Navy divers arrived at Port-au-Prince's crippled port -- where a pier was perilously listing and two of three cranes were submerged -- to help engineers decide how much weight the docks could hold. Slowly, almost gingerly, they began to unload shipping containers from a barge that had sailed from Mobile, Ala., filled with supplies for the World Food Organization and Catholic Relief Services.

"It's really shaky down there," said one of the divers, Chris Lussier.

The delivery of aid was still hampered in some cases, leading to frustration among Haitians and the workers trying to help them. The medical organization Doctors Without Borders said in a statement Tuesday that another one of its cargo planes had been diverted from landing at the Port-au-Prince airport, where officials have struggled to cope with the massive influx of aid. The group said it has had five flights, with a total of 85 tons of medical supplies, refused landing so far.

Army Maj. Gen. Daniel Allyn, second in charge of the U.S. military operation in Haiti, said officials "continue to make progress," but added: "We do not underestimate the scope of the challenge here."

Allyn said troops are working to open more airfields, get more trucks to help deliver water and supplies to victims, and bring in repair and construction equipment to start removing rubble. Some front-loaders could be seen beginning to scoop up the debris of several downtown buildings.

As of Tuesday morning, Allyn said, there were about 2,000 U.S. troops on the ground and about 5,000 on ships or helicopters offshore helping in the efforts. The U.S. military is eventually expected to have 10,000 troops involved in the operation -- with half of them coming ashore.

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U.S. and Canadian military forces have been designated to guard food distribution sites as they open, freeing the U.N. security forces to patrol and keep order. The additional U.N. peacekeeping personnel approved Tuesday will bring the total in Haiti to 12,500.

Throughout the morning, U.S. Navy Black Hawk helicopters shuttled in troops from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to the National Palace compound in the center of the city. The palace itself is in ruins, but the compound is fenced off and the troops appeared to be setting up a temporary camp.

Hundreds of Haitians, many of whom are living in a squalid tent city just outside the palace grounds, pressed against the iron bars to watch the troops arrive. An old man pushed around a wheelbarrow full of popcorn, selling small plastic bags of it.

"They've come here to help give this country direction again," said Josef Laurient, 35 and unemployed, as he watched the troops unload. "I'm so happy to see them, because up to now there has been no security for us."

On a grassy hilltop at the only golf course in Port-au-Prince, soldiers with the 82nd Airborne were unloading helicopters as they shuttled in boxes of emergency rations, which the troops distributed to the residents of a tent city that had grown around them. "It's all gone pretty smoothly. Everybody's been nice and calm," said Sgt. Caleb Barrieau.

U.S. troops had been dropping food and water from helicopters in various locations, but doing so had created mayhem as Haitians scrambled for the supplies. U.N. aid officials have advised against the practice after one drop near the slum of Cite Soleil almost caused a riot.

Among the many supplies running short in Haiti is blood, a World Health Organization official said Tuesday.

"One of the urgent health needs is for blood," said Jon K. Andrus, the deputy director of the WHO's Pan American Health Organization, which is based in Washington. "Haiti's National Blood Center building was damaged, and some equipment may need to be replaced."

In the volatile city center, Haitian business owners began visiting shops and warehouses, hoping to secure what inventory was left. But only a small contingent of Haitian police, unassisted by foreign forces, worked to hold back increasingly impatient crowds awaiting food, water and international help.

Police fired into the air repeatedly in hopes of keeping the gathering crowds away from intact shops. As quickly as they scattered, the crowds reassembled.

"There's no way to stop the looting, but we're here to try to slow it down," said Louis-Jean Ephesian, a Haiti National Police officer patrolling Boulevard Dessaline, the capital's main commercial strip. "The biggest problem now is that people are trying to destroy what's left."

Ephesian and his partner stood guard outside what had been a photocopying business on the Rue des Miracles in the main business district, where few multi-story buildings survived the quake. He said the banks had been robbed of the money in their vaults. Appliance stores had been emptied. Grocery stores had been stripped bare.

The owner of the photocopying store pulled up in a red Toyota pickup and quickly packed his copy machines into the back while he had police protection.

"It's not dangerous here, but the population is hungry," Ephesian said. "If they get food and water, they'll stop acting out of ignorance."

Nearby, hundreds of young men milled about. Francesco Petruzzelli, the owner of a hardware store that, miraculously, was still intact, said that if he opened the large steel door to his shop without police protection, looters would storm inside and empty the shelves. He kept a shotgun inside, he said, but could not safely get it.

"They keep talking about having 10,000 Marines, but where are they?" said Petruzzelli, who is a U.S. citizen. "If they sent even some Marines here, these guys would get scared off, that's a fact. Where are the Americans?"

Staff writers Dana Hedgpeth and Mary Beth Sheridan in Port-au-Prince and staff writer Rob Stein in Washington contributed to this report.

Statistical Data on Haiti and Haitian Americans

On Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010, a powerful earthquake struck Haiti, centered about 15 miles west-southwest of Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital and largest city. The Census Bureau has numerous resources providing information not only on Haitians living in the United States, but on Haiti itself.
The area of the earthquake’s greatest intensity (intensity of 8.0 and higher on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale) included all or parts of 10 communes, which contained three cities of 20,000 people or more in 2003: Carrefour, Léogâne, and Petit-Goâve. The estimated 2009 population of those 10 communes experiencing the earthquake’s greatest intensity was 1.3 million, or 14 percent of the nation’s total population of 9.0 million.	Impact of 2010 Haiti Earthquake [PDF-617K]
Another 14 communes were in a zone of lesser but still substantial intensity (Modified Mercalli Intensity levels of 7.0 – 7.9). These 14 communes included a 2009 estimated population of 2.5 million, 28 percent of the nation’s population. In addition, these communes included Port-au-Prince and two cities with population greater than 20,000 in 2003: Croix-des-Bouquets and Pétionville. Additional information on the demographics of Haiti, from the Census Bureau's International Data Base, can be found at: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/country.php. For more information on the earthquake at USGS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rja6.php

Haitians in the U.S.

The American Community Survey (ACS) provides up-to-date profiles of America's communities every year, including demographic, housing, social, and economic characteristics for numerous geographies. The most detailed race and ethnic data are available through the Selected Population Profiles.

Selected population profile of PEOPLE OF HAITIAN ANCESTRY living in the United States: 2006-2008 3-year estimates

LOCAL ESTIMATES OF POPULATION FOR HAITIANS living in the United States: 2006-2008 3-year estimates

Instructions: Using the hot link immediately above, you will arrive on the American Community Survey home page for the “2006-2008 American Community Survey 3-year estimates.” Within the gray box, click on the link labeled “enter a table number.” Enter either of the following table numbers and click “go” — B04003 (for the number of people of Haitian ancestry) or B05006 (for the number of people born in Haiti). You can then use the drop down menu to select the geography (state, county, etc.) you are looking for. Once you have highlighted your geography, click “add” and then click “show result.”

The ACS 3-year estimates are typically preferable to the ACS 1-year estimates for estimates based on small populations. An estimate of a characteristic can have an acceptably small standard error when it applies to the full population of a published geography. However, the estimate of that characteristic may have an unacceptably large standard error when it applies to a subset of the population of the same geography. For more guidance, please visit the following link http://www.census.gov/acs/www/UseData/mye/myechoosing.html.

U.S. cellphone users donate $22 million to Haiti earthquake relief via text

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By Thomas Heath
Tuesday, January 19, 2010; A10

The American Red Cross has received more than $22 million in U.S. text-message donations for Haiti earthquake relief efforts, far outpacing the charity's previous record of $400,000 for emergency relief using similar technology.

"It's truly an unprecedented amount for a text campaign," said American Red Cross spokesman Roger Lowe.

The $22 million is roughly one-fifth of the $112 million total that the American Red Cross has so far raised for Haiti, most of which has come through more conventional sources such as corporate and online donations.

The text-messaging effort involves sending the word "Haiti" in a cellphone text message to the number 90999, which automatically adds a $10 pledge to a person's phone bill.

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Wireless providers have said they are forgoing standard text-messaging fees for the Haiti effort.

"We make no money on this," said Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson.

To get the money to Haiti faster, Verizon said Monday that it transmitted nearly $3 million in text-message pledges to the American Red Cross. Normally, telecommunications companies wait for the user to pay their phone bill, a process that can take a few months, before passing the donation to the charity.

"I think it's great," said Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, a watchdog group. "They should expedite the funds as rapidly as possible, and I am glad that they are doing that."

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The American Red Cross is not the only group to see a surge in contributions via text messaging. Hundreds of thousands of people have donated using their cellphones. The technology allows charities to tap into new sources of giving, such as young adults.

"The beauty of it is the young people who don't give will give because it's so easy," Borochoff said. "They hit a few buttons and they can show off, and it's the cooler and hipper way than getting out your credit card or whipping out a check like your parents do."

The mobile donation network was set up through the nonprofit Mobile Giving Foundation and is connected with all four major U.S. cellphone carriers -- Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T.

For mixed Haitian American families, getting home can be an odyssey

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By Theola Labbé-DeBose
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 19, 2010; A10

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Carline Georges, an American citizen living in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., came to Haiti on Jan. 1 to see friends and family and to celebrate the national independence holiday. She brought her son Schneider, 4, and they planned to return to the United States in a few weeks.

Then the earthquake hit. Georges and thousands of other Haitian Americans visiting relatives and friends in Haiti had no way to get back to the United States. Clutching crying children and wearing just the clothes on their backs after going hungry and thirsty for days, distraught Haitian Americans lined up outside the U.S. Embassy or waited hours in the Caribbean sun outside of the Toussaint L'Ouverture Airport to be evacuated.

Georges, who stood outside the U.S. Embassy for more than two hours, said her normally boisterous son has been extremely quiet these past few days. With supermarkets closed or destroyed, and no running water or electricity, "where should I go to buy stuff for him?" she asked, standing near a lush palm tree while international security guards carrying M-16s milled around to keep the line orderly.

"He hasn't eaten anything, just drank milk, that's it," she said.

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The U.S. State Department had evacuated 2,200 Americans as of Sunday, said Jerome Oetgen, a spokesman. He estimated that the number would be close to 3,000 by the end of the day on Monday, and that it would continue to climb. The agency is running ads on Haitian radio saying that anyone with a valid U.S. passport can go to Toussaint L'Ouverture Airport for immediate departure to Homestead Air Force Reserve Base near Miami.

Americans who are sick or injured would receive treatment first at the embassy's military hospital, then flown to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base for further observation before being taken to the Florida base, Oetgen said.

"We don't want to make any more misery through bureaucracy; our goal is to help any American who wants to leave," Oetgen said. "We will continue this effort until we are done."

The physical distance between Haiti and the United States belies a fluid and close-knit familial relationship between Haitians living in their home country and those in the United States. Mixed citizenship is common among Haitian families -- a fact that many Haitians said they never gave a moment's thought until now.

Dominic Beatrice, 39, a dentist who has lived in Port-au-Prince since birth, has a daughter, Leyna, 13, who was born in Haiti, and a son Xavier, 9. Beatrice said that she was kidnapped while pregnant with her son, and that after her family paid a ransom, she was released and went to the United States to recover, staying with relatives in Florida. All along she planned to have her child in Haiti, she said, as her father-in-law is a gynecologist and her husband is an orthopedic surgeon. But while she was recovering from the emotional trauma, she went into labor, and her son became a U.S. citizen.

On Monday, she stood with hundreds of other Haitians in a long line that snaked in front of the airport -- a bustling scene of airport workers and everyday Haitians, some of them there to see their family members. When Beatrice got to the head of the line, she met a State Department employee. Flanked by several Haitians to assist with interpreting, J. Brett Fernandez asked to review the family passports.

"This child can travel," Fernandez said, pointing to Xavier. Then she pointed to Leyna: "But this child cannot. You have a decision to make, ma'am. Please let me know what you decide."

Beatrice paused for a moment, looking shocked and unsure. Fernandez told her that if she decided not to travel then, she would have to wait in line again if she changed her mind. Beatrice grabbed her black suitcase and two children and left, fighting back tears.

Faced with the same decision, Bertho Lenesca, 44, with one daughter born in Haiti and another in the United States, said she couldn't make the trip. "I can't separate my two daughters," said Lenesca, who lost her house in the earthquake and has been sleeping on the street. "I don't know what we're going to do."

About 15 minutes passed and Beatrice reentered the line, managing to return to the front, this time without her daughter. She went to her husband in the airport parking lot and they decided that their daughter would stay in Haiti with her father; the two hopefully would end up in the United States via the Dominican Republic. Beatrice would leave immediately with their son.

"I've never thought of one of my children being Haitian and one of them being American," Beatrice said. "But now I know that it is important. I've just made one of the hardest decisions of my life."

In Leogane, Haiti, rebuilding starts with scavenging

Image by glasshalffull91 via Flickr

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 19, 2010; A01

LEOGANE, HAITI -- Townspeople say as many as 500 nuns, priests and students were crushed to death when the cream-colored walls of the Sainte Rose de Lima School collapsed in last Tuesday's earthquake, a disaster that destroyed the emotional and physical centerpiece of this city.

Six days later, mourning has given way to scavenging, as scores of men and women on Monday swarmed the pile of tin, timber, tiny desks and metal chairs to pry loose anything useful. The debris of Leogane's best school is now building the refugee camps rising in nearby parks and cane fields.

A trickle of outside help began to arrive Monday in this once-graceful city about 20 miles west of Port-au-Prince, the capital. No one here is expecting much more, even though by some official assessments the damage to towns across Haiti's southern provinces may exceed that of the ruined capital.

Image by glasshalffull91 via Flickr

"There's been none so far," said Jacques Marcelius, a fisherman who was using a door latch as a crowbar to pry apart boards. "And we're not able to wait any more."

A town in which everyone lost someone in the quake, Leogane has come alive with the energy and enterprise that comes with knowing you're on your own. This provincial hub immediately west of the quake's epicenter, and dozens of other towns along Haiti's southern finger, has been reduced to chunks and masonry, lumber and dust, leaving thousands dead.

Small international medical teams are just now arriving, and they have been quickly overwhelmed by the number of severely injured. Given the extent of the damage to the capital, Haiti's provinces, historically forgotten by the central government, fear they have been overlooked again at this moment of dire need.

"It's beginning to move in here slowly," said Pete Buth of Doctors Without Borders, the medical organization. "But I'm not going to tell you it's still any good."

Buth's team arrived Sunday evening, five days after the quake. Surgical teams from Japan and Argentina pulled in Monday, setting up an operating suite inside the hospital compound where hundreds of families now live in makeshift shelters.

Scores lined up to enter the mobile clinic, surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire. Two men ran toward the surgery area carrying a wooden rocking chair. In it sat a boy, 8, his lifeless legs dangling in front of him.

Buth said his team found that most of the injured had been untreated for days. The team cared for more than 70 people with severe infections and crushed limbs within five hours, then mysteriously ran out of patients.

"We took a walk through the tents and found dozens of injured who couldn't make it even the 50 yards to get inside the hospital for care," he said. "That's indicative of what's out there in this city. Many people just can't get here."

Heading west from Port-au-Prince, traffic slows along a two-lane highway, where large cracks have opened since the quake. In several places, hillsides have tumbled into the road, complicating the delivery of water, food and U.N. peacekeepers deployed to protect the aid workers and medical teams.

On the edge of Leogane, where 134,000 people once lived, U.N. peacekeepers closed a road so a small plane could land with supplies. A human corpse burned on the dusty shoulder.

After a few hours in the city, it is hard to see how any but a tiny fraction of its homes and buildings will remain standing. The United Nations estimates that up to 90 percent of the city's structures suffered heavy damage or were destroyed.

Already, most survivors have moved into the streets, with tent cities filling everything from soccer fields to median strips.

Buth said one shipment of water had arrived, although no one in town appeared to be aware of it. Supplies of essentials are dwindling fast. Men with plastic jugs waited impatiently for a chance at what little fuel remains at the Canaan gas station. A $5 bag of rice sells for $10, and survivors are spending much of their time finding the ways and means to feed families.

"Any money we have we spend on staying alive," said Guifaud Frederic, 35, whose brother was killed when his house collapsed.

Frederic's pharmacy fell, too, and he has built a shelter in a park where he lives with his wife and 1-year-old daughter.

"Most everything coming into this country right now stays in Port-au-Prince," he said. "I don't think we'll see any of it."

Along Grande Rue, the main commercial strip, the collapsed grocery stores have been stripped bare. A church trimmed in pale blue crumpled into the street, and a web of electrical wires loops dangerously overhead, low enough that men on motorcycles duck to avoid them. There is no electricity or running water.

Getro Surin, 26, worked in the hot morning sun on a pile of wood and tin sheeting of what had been a gingerbread-style home, using a hammer to pound apart boards. No one has seen the town's mayor since the quake, he said, and only his deputy has appeared to urge survivors to be patient for aid to arrive.

Surin said he couldn't be patient anymore. He works for a local nonprofit agency, and he and three colleagues went to work Monday collecting from the ruins any useful materials needed for shelters.

"Even in good times, they don't care about the provinces," he said. "They're not going to care now."

Thousands of people died here in the quake, and the bodies of Girard Dessources and son Patrico, 7, are still entombed in the rubble of their home on the corner of Grande Rue and Rue d'Enfer.

The sharp pungency of decomposition filled the air around the home, as it did near the remains of several schools nearby. People wear surgical masks or sport a toothpaste mustache, a technique Haitians use to dampen the smell of death. A mass grave has been dug inside the cemetery walls.

"We were just living our lives, and then this," said Nella Jean-Louise, 44, who lived next to the Dessources family. She lives in the street now under a blue tarp and on a plywood floor, begging for food.

Some here have begun taking for themselves. The shelves of two grocery stores, their facades collapsed, have been stripped bare. The scavenging has accelerated as hope fades that supplies from the outside are on the way.

Along one hardscrabble street, a bicyclist teetered, with a length of lumber over one shoulder and a bedsheet tied around his neck. He was coming from the Sainte Rose de Lima School, which once stood among banana and palm trees in the city's lush center.

Only two classrooms remain standing, and a man worked to dismantle wooden student benches with a hammer, stooping beneath a small black cross painted on the wall above him.

A Haitian history book, a woman's sensible shoe and the laminated report card of Sophonie Saint Short, a sixth-grader, appeared in the pile of detritus being worked over for anything useful.

Sophonie scored a perfect 10 in Creole, catechism, hygienic sciences and vocabulary. A photograph on the back of her report card showed four rows of smiling girls -- her class -- dressed in uniforms of sky-blue jumpers.

No one on the pile knew whether she had survived, saying only that not many did.

Haiti earthquake relief is stifled by chaos in Port-au-Prince

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Mary Beth Sheridan and William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 19, 2010; A01

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Security has emerged as one of the most formidable challenges in this earthquake-shattered capital, officials said Monday, limiting the ability of the United Nations and relief officials from elsewhere to distribute the food and medicine beginning to pile up at the airport.

The U.N. Security Council on Monday unanimously endorsed a proposal from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to send 3,500 more peacekeepers to Haiti to assist in the humanitarian relief effort, but it was not clear how soon they would arrive. Pentagon officials, meanwhile, said they had about 1,700 troops in Haiti, the vanguard of an estimated 5,000 American soldiers and Marines expected to be in the country by midweek.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

"Security is the key now in order for us to be able to put our feet on the ground," said Vincenzo Pugliese, a U.N. spokesman. He said a lack of security had limited peacekeepers' access "to the operational theater" -- the city beyond the U.N. compound's walls.

The acknowledgement came as the streets here filled with people scrambling to survive six days after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed the Haitian capital. The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, estimated that 200,000 people were killed in the earthquake, far more than the 50,000 estimated over the weekend. The new figure is based on information from the Haitian government, but officials cautioned that it was still only an estimate.

Although a few trucks could be spotted in the capital delivering water, residents said they were becoming increasingly hungry.

Many of those in need of food and medicine are children. A representative for UNICEF, which is racing to open a facility to hold children who have lost their families, said thousands of young Haitians could have been separated from their parents in the disaster.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Late Monday, the Obama administration said it would temporarily allow orphaned Haitian children who are eligible for adoption by U.S. citizens into the United States to receive care. "We are committed to doing everything we can to help reunite families in Haiti during this very difficult time," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement.

Exodus from the capital

In Port-au-Prince, scores of desperate residents clambered onto packed buses to flee the chaos. Across the city, buses left for the countryside full and returned to the capital empty. Prices for tickets doubled as the buses jostled in long lines at gas stations.

Station owners refused to open because there was no security to hold back crowds -- and to keep away gunmen who could swoop in and steal a day's sales.

Image via Wikipedia

In the cities of Les Cayes, Jeremie and Cap Haitien, buses were hired by civic organizations, banks and other businesses and sent to the capital to collect anyone who wanted to leave. But the need for transport far outstripped supply.

"The numbers are growing every day for people who want to leave," said Michel Pierre Andre, a bus driver who makes the run to Jeremie. His bus was crammed to the roof with passengers, but the driver had no gas. Drivers and passengers were screaming at the gas station manager to start pumping some fuel, but he refused.

"Nobody wants to come to Port-au-Prince. There is nothing here. No food to buy. No work. No nothing," Pierre Andre said.

Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr

In the city's center, at the sprawling tent cities by the destroyed National Palace, residents said they had not seen a single international aid group distribute food in five days.

"I have been here every day. I heard they gave away some food but there was a riot," said Jean Marie Magarette, who was camping with her mother, sister and four children. "If you tell me they have been giving out food, I will believe you, but we have been on this spot since the day of the earthquake, and we have not seen anyone give away anything but water."

Trying to speed up the effort, President René Préval met with his Dominican counterpart and agreed to create a humanitarian corridor stretching from an airport and ship harbor in the western Dominican Republic into neighboring Haiti.

But relief remained agonizingly slow to get here. Across the capital, painted signs calling for help multiplied: "We need help," said one. "We need food, water, medical," said another.

Caring for the orphans

Officials were only beginning to cope with the challenge of caring for children separated from their parents, who in many cases died in the quake.

Nearly half of Haiti's population is younger than 18 years old. Even in better times, many of this country's youth are in desperate need of aid. In Haiti, where malnutrition is not uncommon, one in four children is reported to have a low birthweight, according to UNICEF.

A spokeswoman for the agency, Tamar Hahn, said UNICEF was seeking to set up a facility for children separated from their parents. Already, clinics around Port-au-Prince are starting to grapple with what to do with children they have treated who arrived unaccompanied by a parent.

As Hahn approached a field hospital near the airport Monday, she was met by Karen Schneider, a pediatric emergency doctor from Johns Hopkins University.

"Did you find us parents for our kids?" Schneider demanded.

Five unaccompanied children had been brought by rescuers to the clinic, run by the University of Miami-based charity Project Medishare. One, an 8-year-old boy named Jonas, curled up in a ball on the ground and cried for his parents for two days, Schneider said.

"We realized he must have seen the bodies," she said.

On another cot was a 2-year-old girl in a diaper, covered with bloody scratches.

"Orphan Baby Girl," read the sign at the end of the cot.

No one knew who had brought in the little girl, who had the bowed arms and legs of a person with cerebral palsy. She whimpered softly.

"We can tell she's never walked. She's completely helpless," Hahn said.

On another cot lay a 9-year-old, Sandi St. Cyr, who said she was on the school bus coming home when the quake occurred. Her bus tipped over, and a man brought her to the hospital for treatment of a sprain in her leg, she said.

"I don't know if my mom is alive," she said. "I haven't seen her."

Staff writers Colum Lynch at the United Nations and Michael E. Ruane and Joby Warrick in Washington contributed to this report.

Haiti: Online Maps Shift from Charting Damage to Targeting Aid

Image via CrunchBase

by Marc Herman

Here are some maps that humanitarian aid responders are using to communicate the evolving situation in Haiti’s earthquake zone. Nearly a week after the disaster — and aftershocks equal to major temblors — the maps and satellite imagery are proving some of the most reliable information available.

The Ushahidi Network has created a very detailed interactive map overlaying information on threats, people needing assistance, medical care, food and other aid availability by type. The map is being updated as information is received via the Ushahidi network, Twitter and Web form. Ushahidi's Erik Hersman, in an email message, said the system was processing mostly web and Twitter communication in the first days after the quake, because cell networks were down in much of southern Haiti. That's changing and cell service, which is more widely distributed, “is bringing in a lot more reports.”

Image by whiteafrican via Flickr

Crisis Commons, a network of technology professionals that creates tools for humanitarian relief response, has announced that it has undertaken a similar project to map relief efforts and to generate a crisis-specific baseline map of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, for relief agencies to use as planning reference. The project has just begun.

In New York City, the New York Public Library has a series of maps online showing camps where survivors are finding shelter. A second set identifies damaged areas and buildings. They are being edited and updated.

Most other imagery is not interactive, but arguably gives a broader overview of the situation. This image from the Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information measures distances from the quake’s epicenter to where people lived in southern Haiti pre-quake. It’s color-coded to reflect population density.

According to the map, the Hatian state of Leogane, though it has not been identified by name in many news reports, was the quake’s epicenter, and contains several heavily-populated areas. Carrefour, a large suburb of Port-au-Prince, is on Leogane state's border. The city of Jacmel, on the coast, is also in Leogane and badly damaged. As of late yesterday, broken roads and bridges were still cutting off the area, which is closer to the epicenter than Port au Prince is, from receiving aid.

The US Geological Survey has put information into a very easy to read chart of cities by population, color-coded by the quake’s intensity. The result is a very fast way to understand just how many people were living in the places hit hardest by the disaster. USGS has also posted a map of the earthquake reports it has received by phone. It shows perceptions from people phoning the USGS to tell them what they saw.

The NYTimes has created a three-dimensional map that is extremely useful for understanding where Port-au-Prince lies in relation to Haiti’s geology. It shows the city in a coastal plan at the foot of a range of mountains that complicate aid delivery. The Times' map also explains very clearly the location of several neighborhoods where medical aid and food distribution has begun, and shelter has become haltingly available.

Direct satellite imagery is available here. Orbital images taken as recently as yesterday are being compared to images of Port-au-Prince and the environs before the quake, like this one.

The satellite view can determine damage and needs in areas that still do not have reliable communication. In theory, night imagery should be able to tell us something similar about electricity, the availability of light, and perhaps fuel. But if those images are in use, they haven’t been made public yet.

For more on the earthquake in Haiti, visit our Special Coverage page.

The thumbnail image used in this post, Day 15 - Small World, is by kylebaker, used under a Creative Commons license. Visit kylebaker's flickr photostream.

Longtime host of Haitian radio show turns focus to earthquake recovery

Image by Hugh Cree via Flickr

By Michael S. Rosenwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 18, 2010; B01

Just before 10 p.m. Saturday, a Maryland state highway engineer sat down in the DJ's booth at WPFW, a tiny radio station on a narrow side street in Adams Morgan.

His name, in official traffic and engineering circles, is Jean Yves Point-du-Jour. But on Saturday nights, sitting in front of an old, dusty soundboard, he becomes Yves Dayiti, host of "Konbit Lakay."

For 26 years, from 10 to midnight on 89.3 FM, Dayiti has brought the sounds and news of Haiti, his native country, to thousands of Haitians in the Washington area.

On Saturday, he was supposed to have the night off. He was supposed to be visiting Haiti.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

"But here I am," he said as he opened the show. "We have a lot to talk about tonight."

This was probably the biggest show of his radio career, coming days after an earthquake had flattened the most populous area of Haiti, including the block in Port-au-Prince where he grew up. He assumed -- and a sudden spike in interest from the mainstream media affirmed -- that he would be speaking to a much broader audience.

"It is only in a time of disaster that people know we exist," he said in an interview before going on the air.

But Dayiti's weight in the Haitian community is such that his first guest was U.S. Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.). Dayiti has never feared to use his influence, criticizing the Haitian government and describing what he says is neglect of his native country on the part of rich global powers, such as the one based on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

On the phone with Edwards, Dayiti called the $100 million that President Obama pledged to rebuild Haiti "a first step," adding, somewhat sharply, and not as a question: "We can get more than that."

On the show, Dayiti talked with Haitian leaders from Miami and other parts of the United States. He spoke in English, in contrast to most Saturdays, when the program is mainly in Creole. Organizers of relief efforts provided Web site addresses and phone numbers. If the program sounded more like an urgent late-night infomercial rather than the usual offering of Haitian hit tunes and political debate, Dayiti didn't seem to mind.

Dayiti, 56, came to the United States as a student, ending up at Morgan State University in Baltimore. He worked as a dishwasher and has used education -- receiving three degrees -- to build a professional life.

He got the radio show, a volunteer gig, as other hosts often do, starting low on the totem pole. Through fellow Haitians, he had heard that WPFW, a listener-sponsored, noncommercial station, needed extra hands. He answered phones and had some on-air appearances that led to "Konbit Lakay."

On Saturday, Dayiti, wearing a yellow shirt and mustard-colored tie, pulled his show notes out from a black plastic shopping bag tucked under the soundboard. As he chewed gum, his headset bopped in and out from his ears. In addition to playing host, queuing up music and quizzing guests, he answered a 1970s-era telephone with "WPFW!"

The thermostat in the announcer's booth was set to a balmy 77 degrees, but Dayiti didn't break a sweat, even when callers engaged in the eternal scourge of talk radio: leaving their radio on too loud in the background. Dayiti just shouted: "Listen to me, not the radio! Turn it down!" Most of the time, this did not work. He never hung up on anyone, though.

One of the few calls in English came from a woman who had been sitting in the station's lobby, listening to the show earlier with other members of the Haitian and Caribbean communities. On the air, she said, "I think I forgot my purse."

Dayiti told her, "You're on the air."

During the show, Dayiti kept his expressions of disdain for the Haitian government to a minimum, tossing a few light barbs here and there. But earlier in the evening, when he was a guest on "Caribbeana," the station's long-running program of island music, news and culture with Von Martin, Dayiti was less restrained.

"People built homes where they shouldn't have been built," he said. "There are no building standards. . . . This disaster was foreseen. It was waiting to happen."

He blasted "the leadership that brought us to the position we are in," and he looked ahead to the rebuilding: "I'm going to fight to make sure my country does not become an experiment. We have to do it right. Either they kill me, or it works."

On Tuesday, he goes back to work as a traffic engineer.

Officials try to prevent Haitian earthquake refugees from coming to U.S.

Image by nofrills via Flickr

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 18, 2010; A08

As a massive international relief effort lurches into gear, U.S. officials are stepping up measures to prevent last week's earthquake in Haiti from triggering a Caribbean migration not seen in two nearly two decades.

Experts see no signs for now of a seaborne exodus, although history shows that such events are difficult to predict. Still, South Florida counties have prepared contingency plans, immigration authorities have cleared space in a 600-bed detention center in Miami, and Obama administration officials have begun discouraging Haitians from attempting the hazardous 600-mile sea crossing to Florida.

"Please: If any Haitians are watching, there may be an impulse to leave the island and to come here," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Saturday at Homestead Air Reserve Base in Homestead, Fla., where she joined Vice President Biden in speaking to relief workers at a federal staging area.

Image by caribb via Flickr

"This is a very dangerous crossing. Lives are lost every time people try to make this crossing," Napolitano said, adding that Haitians caught at sea will be repatriated. "Please do not have us divert our necessary rescue and relief efforts that are going into Haiti by trying to leave at this point."

The warnings come paired with a giant humanitarian operation to rebuild Port-au-Prince, position U.S. military assets in the area, and adjust U.S. and international immigration policies. In the long run, such measures would be the most effective tools to prevent a refugee crisis, current and former government officials said.

Image by pshab via Flickr

With as many as 3 million people affected by Tuesday's quake, the stakes for the Obama administration in heading off a wave of migrants are high.

"We don't want to have destabilization in Haiti, and deaths of this magnitude in Haiti cause destabilization and have political implications," said Andrew S. Natsios, a veteran foreign aid official who led U.S. relief efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan and during the Asian tsunami in 2004.

"You cannot prohibit people from moving under international law if they feel threatened. But you can create incentives to stay," said Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 2001 to 2006. "If you do the relief response right, most people will want to rebuild."

American presidents since Jimmy Carter have grappled with flows of migrants from the Caribbean triggered by political crises, wars and natural disasters. The sudden influx of 100,000 Cubans and 25,000 Haitians in the 1980 Mariel boatlift left some refugees in U.S. camps for years.

After a coup in Haiti in 1991, the U.S. government housed 12,000 Haitian migrants in Guantanamo Bay and admitted 10,000 before a new government was in place in 1994, a year in which the U.S. Coast Guard stopped and rescued 64,000 Haitians and Cubans at sea.

Spurred by reports that Cuban leader Fidel Castro was in failing health in 2006, the U.S. government embarked on an intensive contingency plan, called Operation Vigilant Sentry, signed by Michael Chertoff, then homeland security secretary, in 2007. A central feature of the plan is a public messaging campaign designed to dissuade Cubans -- then the focus -- from risking the life-threatening 90-mile journey across the Florida straits.

Although electronic mass media in Haiti is virtually nonexistent -- and the trip to America a harrowing three days instead of a few hours -- the enormous pending flow of aid, troops and official statements is conveying a similar message.

"It's not that the deterrence is the physical power; it's more the soft power," said Coast Guard Capt. Robert B. Watts, chief of drug and migrant interdiction policy from 2006 to 2008 and now a professor at the National War College. "You let people know you're there if you need help but that it doesn't make sense to leave."

Nations worldwide have pledged $400 million so far to Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, led by $100 million by the United States. By comparison, when Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America in 1998, U.S. spending and debt relief totaled $900 million, most of which went to Honduras.

"The best thing we can do is spend as much relief aid as possible in Haiti," Natsios said. "Make sure food arrives promptly. Restart and stimulate Haitian markets. Restore people's lives."

U.S. officials are also adopting new immigration measures, combining carrots and sticks. On Wednesday, Napolitano suspended deportations of 100,000 to 200,000 Haitians in the country illegally, and on Friday, she announced that those in the country as of Jan. 12 could apply for temporary protected status so they can help send financial aid to their devastated homeland.

Homeland security officials, however, warned that Haitians caught trying to enter the United States illegally will still be detained and deported. Florida officials said contingency plans could call for housing migrants at the Homestead base if space beyond the federal Krome immigration detention center is needed.

Elsewhere in the region, the Bahamas set up processing facilities on its island nearest Haiti, beefing up medical, shelter and law enforcement resources.

Thad M. Bingel, former chief of staff of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from 2007 until March, said that under Vigilant Sentry, U.S. officials expect a warning of several days if residents begin to build or stage boats and a coordinated response of more than 30 federal, state and local groups to safely intercept migrants if Napolitano and the National Security Council activate plans.

In any mass migration, he added, "the challenges are recognizing that government has a humanitarian role as well as an enforcement role."

Staff writer Peter Whoriskey in Miami contributed to this report.

Haitian President Préval largely absent in quake's aftermath

Image via Wikipedia

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 18, 2010; A01

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- As foreign aid and troops flow into this ruined capital, a Haitian government led by a diffident president has been overwhelmed, making it largely invisible since the earthquake throttled the country six days ago.

An aloof politician who was educated abroad, President René Préval has spoken far more to foreign audiences through satellite television than to his own people. Over consecutive days this weekend, Préval, 67, met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. But he has yet to visit the vast refugee camp that has risen in the city center alongside the crumbled National Palace, where he once lived.

The U.S. government views Préval, an agronomist by training, as a technocrat largely free of the sharp political ideologies that have divided Haiti for decades. But at a time when tragedy is forcing the country essentially to begin again, Préval's aversion to the public stage has left millions of Haitians wondering whether there is a government at all.

"Clearly, we have not spent enough time with the people," Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, Préval's right-hand man, said in an interview. "But we are overwhelmed. We just can't step back and have a vision for this country. Soon, we hope, the operations will be matched with a strategy for the future."

Bellerive, who has been in office less than two months, acknowledged that "we are not only ourselves victims of the disaster, but also do not have the capacity to do this on our own."

Since the ouster of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986, Haiti's elected government has been weak. Largely mistrusted by its people, the government has been unable to lift the country from severe poverty despite billions of dollars in annual international aid.

Préval and his ministers are sitting now at the volatile intersection of a sputtering aid effort and the rising demands of millions of Haitians traumatized by the quake and desperate for basic assistance. The emergency-triage stage will soon give way to long-term planning for how to rebuild a country virtually from scratch.

With most government buildings in precarious condition, Préval and his ministers have decamped to the one-story Judicial Police headquarters on the outskirts of the city. On Sunday morning, a throng of Canadian generals, Spanish aid workers and other foreigners waited there for a turn to see government officials.

Beyond the guards and gates, though, anger among Haitians displaced by the 7.0-magnitude quake is rising quickly. It is directed primarily at Préval's administration.

"We're living here with God alone," said student Dalromy Guerrier, 19, who has moved with his family into a shelter on the sideline at the national soccer stadium, where substitutes usually wait to enter a game. "Is there anyone coming to help?"

Although he has served at the highest ranks of government for nearly two decades, Préval has been known more as a surrogate than as a powerful politician in his own right.

The son of a former Haitian agriculture minister forced to flee the Duvalier regime, Préval grew up outside his country. He studied business and biology in Belgium and Italy and even worked as a waiter in Brooklyn before returning to Haiti in the early 1980s to work in the government.

He also opened a bakery here in the capital. Through his charitable bread donations, Préval came to know Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a spellbinding liberation priest who preached against the Duvalier dictatorship.

In 1990, Aristide became Haiti's first elected leader, and he named Préval prime minister. Over the next 14 years, Aristide was ousted by a military coup, returned to power, reelected and then ousted again in 2004.

Préval was along for much of the rocky ride, following Aristide as president in 1996 and again in 2006. But he has distanced himself from Aristide's Lavalas party, which in Creole means "a cleansing flood," and he has governed more moderately -- to the frustration of much of his mentor's impoverished constituency.

He imposed economic austerity measures in his first term, including the privatization of some government services, which drew criticism for primarily benefiting Haiti's elite. But unemployment fell. Préval also championed the trials of military and police officials accused of human rights violations, a first in Haiti.

Many of Haiti's poor supported his reelection in 2006, mostly because they thought it would lead to Aristide's return from South African exile. A day after the earthquake, Aristide reiterated his desire to come back. His return would give the country a highly visible leader but would also inject a divisive political element into recovery efforts, making it unlikely that Préval would welcome him.

Rich and poor alike say Préval's administration is riddled with corruption. Many Haitians now express the conflicting impulse to see their government in action at a time of crisis while wanting to make sure it is denied access to international aid for fear it will be stolen.

Mario Viau, the owner of Signal FM, a major radio station based in the wealthy hillside community of Petionville, said he sent his employees out into the city to search for a government official to speak on the air. None could be found.

He then appealed over the radio for an official to visit his station and deliver public service announcements, ranging from how to find a missing relative to how to dispose of a dead body. What he received was a representative from Préval's office, who delivered a taped message from the president urging calm.

"We didn't feel like we had a government," Viau said. "But I wanted to put some kind of government on the radio. We have a president who doesn't like to talk at all."

Along Camus Street, a strip of cinder-block houses that begins at a school and ends at the cemetery, Alberthe Gordard gathered her bedding from the street one recent morning.

"My house," she said, pointing to a gingerbread façade listing far to the left.

Like her neighbors, Gordard and her two young children are sleeping head-to-toe in the street, blocked off by rubble and piles of trash. She gathers water from an open spigot in a plastic jug that once contained antifreeze, but it is not clean enough to drink.

"I'm hungry," she said. "We haven't seen anyone from the government. They have left us to this."

Correspondent William Booth contributed to this report from Petionville, Haiti.

Haiti's elite spared from much of the devastation

Image by Fly For Fun via Flickr

By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 18, 2010; A08

PETIONVILLE, HAITI -- Through decades of coups, hurricanes, embargoes and economic collapse, members of the wily and powerful business elite of Haiti have learned the art of survival in one of the most chaotic countries on Earth -- and they might come out on top again.

Although Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed many buildings in Port-au-Prince, it mostly spared homes and businesses up the mountain in the cool, green suburb of Petionville, home to former presidents and senators.

A palace built atop a mountain by the man who runs one of Haiti's biggest lottery games is still standing. New-car dealers, the big importers, the families that control the port -- they all drove through town with their drivers and security men this past weekend. Only a few homes here were destroyed.

Image by treesftf via Flickr

"All the nation is feeling this earthquake -- the poor, the middle class and the richest ones," said Erwin Berthold, owner of the Big Star Market in Petionville. "But we did okay here. We have everything cleaned up inside. We are ready to open. We just need some security. So send in the Marines, okay?"

As Berthold stood outside his two-story market, stocked with fine wines and imported food from Miami and Paris, his customers cruised by and asked when he would reopen. "Maybe Monday!" he shouted, then held up his hand to his ear, for customers to call his cellphone.

So little aid has been distributed that there is not much difference between what the rich have received and what the poor have received. The poor started with little and now have less; the rich simply have supplies to last.

But search-and-rescue operations have been intensely focused on buildings with international aid workers, such as the crushed U.N. headquarters, and on large hotels with international clientele. Some international rescue workers said they are being sent to find foreign nationals first.

There is an extreme, almost feudal divide between rich and poor in Haiti. The gated and privately guarded neighborhoods resemble a Haitian version of Beverly Hills, but with razor wire.

Elias Abraham opened the door of his pretty walled compound, a semiautomatic pistol on his right hip and his family's passports in his back pocket.

His extended family's four-wheel-drive sport-utility vehicles are filled with gas. He has a generator big enough to power a small hotel. And even if his kids are sleeping in the courtyard because they are afraid of the continuing aftershocks, his maids are dressed in crisp, blue uniforms and his hospitable wife is able to welcome visitors with fresh-brewed coffee.

Abraham has not been unaffected by the quake. His Twins Market grocery store collapsed Tuesday and fell prey to looters Wednesday.

"They took everything," said Abraham, the Haitian-born son of a Syrian Christian merchant family. "I don't care. God bless them. If they need the food, take it. Just don't take it and sell it for a hundred times what it is worth.

"This is not the time to think about making money," he added. "We need security. We need calm."

Up in the mountains, there are flower vendors selling day-old roses across the street from refugees in tents. There are beauty salons, fitness gyms and French restaurants. All of them are shuttered but mostly undamaged.

Few buildings collapsed in Petionville and the surrounding area, but a drive through the hillsides found only three or four spilling into ravines.

"Thank God for the mountain," said Wesley Belizaire, who escaped to the hills above Petionville with 15 friends and family members to camp out in a sprawling stucco. "It is so safe, safe, safe." The house belongs to his boss, the owner of a travel agency, who was visiting the Bahamas when the quake struck.

The police are operating out of a well-supplied station in Petionville, where the parking lot was filled with idle police trucks. There have been few reports of looting here, even though the town has banks on every corner. Hervé Delorme, executive marketing director of Sogebank, stood outside a branch and said the building was safe and sound. "Only because of the electricity and communications we do not have the technology available to open," he said.

Across the street, one of the few pharmacies in the area was open. It was guarded by three Haitian police officers with rifles who let one customer in at a time. Down at the General Hospital, families wandered through the courtyard filled with patients with amputated limbs and open wounds, begging foreigners for medicine.

For better or worse, it will likely be the residents of Petionville who through their government connections, trading companies and interconnected family businesses will receive a large portion of U.S. and international aid and reconstruction money.

After a service at St. Louis Catholic Church in Port-au-Prince early Sunday, Yva Souriac was warning fellow parishioners what would come next with international assistance. "They only give the aid money to the same big families, over and over. So I ask, what is the point? They have given money to these families to help Haiti for 50 years, and look at Haiti. I say the Americans need to make up a new list."