TORONTO — Help was slowly starting to reach desperate survivors of the earthquake in Haiti Saturday, despite the massive infrastructure damage suffered in the disaster, Canadian aid groups said.
World Vision, UNICEF and the Canadian Red Cross said planes with relief supplies landed at the airport in Port-au-Prince Saturday and more are on the way. Supplies were also being trucked in from the Dominican Republic, the Red Cross said.
However aid workers describe a chaotic situation with people sleeping in the streets, damaged hospitals and some roads that are difficult to travel.
Steve Matthews of World Vision Canada said in an interview Saturday from Port-au-Prince that the chaos there has increased over the past three days and it's harder to get around the city but aid is getting through.
"It seems that those who have cars that didn't have gasoline for them have found fuel and they're out driving around," said Matthews, 52, who's from London, Ont.
Some streets remain inaccessible but the main roads can be travelled although debris on the side of the road makes the lanes very thin. He described a surreal scene as he drove at night, illuminated by headlights.
"You see things along the edge of the road and you're kind of (think) what is that and then you realize it's 300 people sleeping basically side by side by side along the edge of the road and that's all over the edge of the city," he said.
"When they're sleeping it looks kind of freaky because it looks like dead bodies. In this city that's been destroyed, that's in rubble, that's pulverized, it's very surreal, very eerie."
The priority remains on search and rescue operations as time starts to run out, said Isabelle Marin of Montreal, with the Panama-based Red Cross Pan American Disaster Response Unit, in an interview from Port-au-Prince Saturday.
Marin said there is still hope of finding people alive in debris. She told of a dramatic rescue of a family that had texted they were trapped in rubble in Port-au-Prince, despite the limited communications there.
"Our team leader today managed to relay a (text) message practically across the world, through Canada, through here, through Panama to Europe back to the search and rescue unit so they could go and rescue a family that had contacted by text message that they were trapped under the rubble," said Marin.
A convoy of Canadian Red Cross doctors and nurses also arrived and set up base camp Saturday, said Marin.
An emergency hospital advance team from the International Committee of the Red Cross went to the hospital in the centre of the city Saturday and performed triage, she said.
Two cargo flights with hospital and surgical supplies have landed and a Canadian cargo plane has landed, said Marin.
Within the day or two, a Norwegian Red Cross field hospital will be set up to provide "the emergency health care that's very much needed," she said.
Canadian doctors and nurses will be part of an international team that will staff the field hospital.
"The International Committee of the Red Cross actually has 40 tonnes of supplies that will be on the ground within the next 24 hours to be distributed," said Katie Kallio of the Canadian Red Cross in an interview from Ottawa on Saturday.
The Red Cross, which has been in Haiti since 2006, already had some supplies in the region which it quickly deployed. From its warehouse in Panama, it has sent 15,000 blankets, 3,000 buckets, 6,000 tarps, 4,000 mosquito nets and 2,000 jerry cans to the quake zone.
The Haitian Red Cross Society has hundreds of volunteers on the ground distributing these items. For them, and it's overwhelming, said Kallio.
"These are people who not only see the immense needs but they themselves have lost their homes, they've lost their families. Members of their own neighbourhoods and communities have been affected by this," she said.
A plane carrying water and sanitation materials from UNICEF landed at the Port-au-Prince Airport on Friday while another arrived Saturday, said UNICEF Canada president Nigel Fisher in Toronto.
"That means water purification tablets, jerry cans, larger bladder tanks, oral rehydration salts given to children when they have diarrhea to stop that. We had several water and sanitation engineers on the flight," said Fisher.
The distribution of water bottles has been proceeding although some locations have been difficult with a large crowd forming, "and in one or two places it was getting a little rough," said Fisher.
But on the whole, he said, UNICEF has not seen too many incidents.
Source:AFP
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