Friday, January 29, 2010

No Longer a Princely Port

It wasn't before the quake, either.

"Rescued girl’s mother never lost hope; Teen entombed in ruins for weeks gaining strength" by Vivian Sequera and Michelle Faul, Associated Press | January 29, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - This grieving city, where uncounted thousands were entombed in a landscape of broken and heaped-up concrete, wood, and metal. They’re among an estimated 200,000 quake dead in Haiti, including 150,000 who Haitian officials say have been buried anonymously in mass graves.

Some have said it may be as high as half-a-million.

The US Army’s bulldozers were digging into that rubble yesterday, knocking down shaky walls and beginning to clear away ruins in Port-au-Prince, where perhaps 90 percent of the buildings were destroyed or damaged in the Jan. 12 quake.

Translation; the whole country was flattened.

Among the tens of thousands of survivors, desperation has grown as a huge global relief effort has run into bottlenecks in air, sea, and road transport, with looting and other security problems disrupting mass food handouts. Coordination remained a problem, leaving big gaps in food distribution.

Related: The Horror of Haiti

Aid Effort to Help Haiti Failed

Yeah, I'd say so after two f***ing weeks!

The UN World Food Program says it has delivered more than 4 million rations, equivalent to roughly 13 million meals, to some 500,000 people. But it projects that 2 million Haitians need food aid - now and until December.

That's ALL YEAR!!!

Some 1 million quake-displaced people, surviving beneath plastic sheets, cardboard, blankets, or other skimpy covering in city streets and plazas, also need 200,000 family-size tents as a short-term shelter solution, international specialists say....

--more--"