Worries mounted, meanwhile, about food and water for the survivors. “People have been almost fighting for water,’’ aid worker Fevil Dubien said as he distributed water from a truck in a northern Port-au-Prince neighborhood.
From Virginia, France, and China, a handful of rescue teams were able to get down to work, scouring the rubble for survivors. In one successful rescue, searchers pulled a security guard alive from beneath the collapsed concrete floors of the UN peacekeeping headquarters, where many others were entombed.
Across the capital, uncounted bodies littered the streets in the 80-degree heat, and dust-caked arms and legs reached from the ruins. Outside the General Hospital morgue, hundreds of collected corpses blanketed the parking lot, as the grief-stricken searched for loved ones. Brazilian UN peacekeepers, key to the city’s security, were trying to organize mass burials.
Patience already was waning among those waiting for aid, said David Wimhurst, spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission.
“They want us to provide them with help, which is, of course, what we want to do,’’ he said. But they see UN vehicles patrolling the streets to maintain calm, and not delivering aid, and “they’re slowly getting more angry and impatient,’’ he said.
In Washington, President Obama announced “one of the largest relief efforts in our recent history,’’ starting with $100 million in aid. The US Southern Command reported that the first 100 of a planned 900 paratroopers from the 82d Airborne Division landed in Haiti from North Carolina yesterday, to be followed this weekend by more than 2,000 Marines. The American troops “will relieve pressure’’ on overworked UN elements, Wimhurst said.
Other governments, the United Nations, and private aid groups were sending planeloads of high-energy biscuits and other food, tons of water, tents, blankets, water-purification gear, heavy equipment for removing debris, helicopters and other transport, and teams of hundreds of search-and-rescue, medical, and other specialists.
The looting of shops added to concerns. The Brazilian military warned aid convoys to add security to guard against looting by the desperate population.
