Posted on 01/21/2010 6:54:10 AM PST by Tennessee Nana
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Workers are carving out mass graves on a hillside north of Haiti's capital, using earth-movers to bury 10,000 earthquake victims in a single day while relief workers warn the death toll could increase.
Medical clinics have 12-day patient backlogs, untreated injuries are festering and makeshift camps housing thousands of survivors could foster disease, experts said.
"The next health risk could include outbreaks of diarrhea, respiratory tract infections and other diseases among hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in overcrowded camps with poor or nonexistent sanitation," said Dr. Greg Elder, deputy operations manager for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti.
Hoping to assess the scope of the crisis, World Food Program chief Josette Sheeran planned to visit Haiti on Thursday, as did European Union aid chief Karel De Gucht.
The death toll is estimated at 200,000, according to Haitian government figures relayed by the European Commission, with 80,000 buried in mass graves. The commission now estimates 2 million homeless, up from 1.5 million, and says 250,000 are in need of urgent aid.
In the sparsely populated wasteland of Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, burial workers on Wednesday said the macabre task of handling the never-ending flow of bodies was traumatizing.
"I have seen so many children, so many children. I cannot sleep at night and, if I do, it is a constant nightmare," said Foultone Fequiert, 38, his face covered with a T-shirt against the overwhelming stench.
The dead stick out at all angles from the mass graves — tall mounds of chalky dirt, the limbs of men, women and children frozen together in death. "I received 10,000 bodies yesterday alone," said Fequiert.
Workers say they have no time to give the dead proper religious burials or follow pleas from the international community that bodies be buried in shallow graves from which loved ones might eventually retrieve them.
"We just dump them in, and fill it up," said Luckner Clerzier, 39, who was helping guide trucks to another grave site farther up the road.
An Associated Press reporter counted 15 burial mounds at Clerzier's site, each covering a wide trench cut into the ground some 25 feet deep, and rising 15 feet into the air. At the larger mass grave, where Fequiert toiled, three earth-moving machines cut long trenches into the earth, readying them for more cadavers.
Others struggle to stem the flow of the dead.
More than eight days after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake, rescuers searched late into the night for survivors with dogs and sonar equipment. A Los Angeles County rescue team sent three dogs separately into the rubble on a street corner in Petionville, a suburb overlooking Port-au-Prince. Each dog picked up the scent of life at one spot.
They tested the spot and screamed into the rubble in Creole they've learned: "If you hear me, bang three times."
They heard no response, but vowed to continue.
"It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and each day the needles are disappearing," team member Steven Chin said.
One rescue was reported. The International Medical Corps said it was caring for a child found in ruins Wednesday. The boy's uncle told doctors and a nurse with the Los Angeles-based organization that relatives pulled the 5-year-old from the wreckage of his home after searching for a week, said Margaret Aguirre, an IMC spokeswoman in Haiti.
A Dutch adoption agency said Thursday that a mercy flight carrying 106 adopted children was on its way to the Netherlands from Port-au-Prince. The children on board the plane were all in the process of being adopted and already had been matched to new Dutch parents before the quake.
At the Mission Baptiste hospital south of Port-au-Prince, patients waited on benches or rolling beds while doctors and nurses raced among them, X-rays in hand.
The hospital had just received badly need supplies from soldiers of the U.S Army's 82nd Airborne Division, but hospital director John Angus said there wasn't enough. He pleaded for more doctors, casts and metal plates to fix broken limbs.
Meanwhile, a flotilla of rescue vessels led by the U.S. hospital ship Comfort steamed into Port-au-Prince harbor Wednesday to help fill gaps in the struggling global effort to deliver water, food and medical help.
Elder, of Doctors Without Borders, said that patients were dying of sepsis from untreated wounds and that some of the group's posts had 10- to 12-day backups of patients.
Adding to the terror, a 5.9-magnitude aftershock shook Haiti's capital Wednesday, sending people screaming into the streets. Some buildings collapsed and an undertaker said one woman died of a heart attack. Surgical teams and patients were forced to evacuate temporarily from at least one hospital.
At United Nations headquarters in New York, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said it was believed 3 million people are affected. Vast, makeshift camps and settlements have sprung up for survivors.
Joseph St. Juste and his 5-year-old daughter, Jessica, were among 50,000 people spending their nights at a golf course. He is afraid to stay in his home because of the aftershocks.
The survivors have put of shelters of bedsheets or cardboard boxes on fairways that snake up the hill toward a country club where U.S. paratroopers give out food daily.
St. Juste, a 36-year-old bus driver, wakes up every day and goes out to find food and water for his daughter.
"I wake up for her," he said. "Life is hard anymore. I've got to get out of Haiti. There is no life in Haiti."
Associated Press writers contributing to this report included Alfred de Montesquiou, Tamara Lush, Kevin Maurer, Michelle Faul, Bill Gorman and Jessica Desvarieux in Haiti; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Emma Vandore and Elaine Ganley in Paris; and Aoife White in Brussels.
"I have seen so many children, so many children. I cannot sleep at night and, if I do, it is a constant nightmare," said Foultone Fequiert,
That poor guy. The memories will be with him for the rest of his life.
Not very well, evidently.
Welcome to FRee Republic n00b...
I would think they would want to burn the bodies. Burying them will just spread more disease and take up land that could be occupied by others?
Apparantly they were stopped from doing that...
From the article...
“Workers say they have no time to give the dead proper religious burials or follow pleas from the international community that bodies be buried in shallow graves from which loved ones might eventually retrieve them.”
I dont know how they thought the families could find their loved ones later...
But with a mindset like that imagine the uproar if the bodies were burnt...
(Though it would be the best thing to do...disease, room, time etc)
No problem. Obama is planning on cutting social security and medicare for AMERICAN seniors with his 18 member panel. He will totally bypass Congress. There will be plenty of money for Haiti and illegal aliens now. Illegal aliens and third world countries are obviously more important than American seniors to Obama. Keep pushing his agenda folks.
Send aid, let the world help too but I am more concerned with Americans versus letting more Haitians floord into America which is Obama and the liberal news media’s agenda in this story.
Maybe Chattanooga would like to take 100,000 Haitians. How about 200,000 - we have plenty of them in FL bankrupting the state. I think the good people of TN need a LOT more Haitians. How about 1 million?
We got the bulk of the Russians and Kurds...
How about your state taking some ???
Let me second that welcome, newbie.
I can’t even imagine the grief and horror. I try to pray constantly - it’s hard to pick what to focus on. It’s all so overwhelming. I’m so grateful we have such a big, powerful God
***Workers say they have no time to give the dead proper religious burials or follow pleas from the international community that bodies be buried in shallow graves from which loved ones might eventually retrieve them. *****
I read a couple of days ago that this has led to an intense fear among the Haitians of zombies.
And when the zombies don't come, maybe the Haitians will wake up and say, "What the Hell were we thinking?"
***Meanwhile, a flotilla of rescue vessels led by the U.S. hospital ship Comfort steamed into Port-au-Prince harbor ***
I received a letter from a man who was on the Comfort when it took care of Haitian patients in 1994. He refuses to give anything to Haititan relief as a result. Here is part of what he said, I cannot verify it but am printing it for your consideration...
His letter, written a few days ago, about his expierience in 1994.
“One hospital ship will not be of much use in this disaster. Haitians are animals. 1/3 of them have aids 1/3 of them have TB a high percentage of them have both not to mention syphilis and other types of VD.”
“We had over 800 of them on the COMFORT in 1994, absolutely ignorant savages. We 30 or 40 porta-johns on the flight deck but they would not use them. They would just take a dump wherever the were standing, pissed where ever they happened to be, had casual sex right out in the open (not as sexy as it may sound). Some it prostitution but a lot of it was recreational. Filthy Filthy people with zero personal hygiene.”
“We had a little publicized riot on Comfort. We had to beat them back with fire hoses and Billy clubs. Within hours we had 100 marines flown over to us to keep order.”
“We took our 800 refugees to Gitmo and it was several years before we got rid of the stench of these people who threw defication against the wall and at our crew who was feeding them, giving them medical care etc.”
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