Haiti Devastated by Quake; Scores Believed Dead

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www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582877,00.html

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A powerful earthquake struck Haiti's capital on Tuesday with withering force, toppling everything from simple shacks to the ornate National Palace and the headquarters of U.N. peacekeepers. The dead and injured lay in the streets even as strong aftershocks rippled through the impoverished Caribbean country.

Associated Press journalists based in Port-au-Prince said the damage from the quake — the most powerful to hit Haiti in more than 200 years — is staggering even in a country accustomed to tragedy and disaster.

SLIDESHOW: Devastation in Haiti

VIDEO: Witness Describes Earthquake

Women covered in dust crawled from the rubble wailing as others wandered through the streets holding hands. Thousands gathered in public squares late into the night, singing hymns. Many gravely injured people still sat in the streets early Wednesday, pleading for doctors. With almost no emergency services to speak of, the survivors had few other options.

Thousands of buildings were damaged and destroyed throughout the city, and for hours after the quake the air was filled with a choking dust from the debris of fallen buildings.

The scope of the disaster remained unclear, and even a rough estimate of the number of casualties was impossible. But it was clear from a tour of the capital that tens of thousands of people had lost their homes and that many had perished. Many buildings in Haiti are flimsy and dangerous even under normal conditions.

"The hospitals cannot handle all these victims," said Louis-Gerard Gilles, a doctor and former senator, as he helped survivors. "Haiti needs to pray. We all need to pray together."

An Associated Press videographer saw a wrecked hospital where people screamed for help in Petionville, a hillside Port-au-Prince district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians as well as many poor people.

At a collapsed four-story apartment building, a girl of about 16 stood atop a car, trying to peer inside as several men pulled at a foot sticking out in an attempt to extricate the body. She said her family was inside.

U.N. peacekeepers, most of whom are from Brazil, were trying to rescue survivors from their collapsed five-story headquarters, but U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said late Tuesday that "as we speak no one has been rescued."

"We know there will be casualties but we cannot give figures for the time being," he said.

Many U.N. personnel were missing, he said, including mission chief Hedi Annabi, who was in the building when the quake struck. Some 9,000 peacekeepers have been in Haiti since a 2004 rebellion ousted the president.

Taiwan's Foreign Ministry said its embassy was destroyed and the ambassador hospitalized for undisclosed injuries.

The National Palace crumbled into itself, but Haiti's ambassador to Mexico Robert Manuel said President Rene Preval and his wife survived the earthquake. He had no details.

The 7.0-magnitude quake struck at 4:53 p.m. Tuesday, centered 10 miles (15 kilometers) west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of 5 miles (8 kilometers), the U.S. Geological Survey said. USGS geophysicist Kristin Marano called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in what is now Haiti. In 1946, a magnitude-8.1 quake struck the Dominican Republic and also shook Haiti, producing a tsunami that killed 1,790 people.

The temblor appeared to have occurred along a strike-slip fault, where one side of a vertical fault slips horizontally past the other, said earthquake expert Tom Jordan at the University of Southern California. The quake's size and proximity to populated Port-au-Prince likely caused widespread casualties and structural damage, he said.

"It's going to be a real killer," he said. "Whenever something like this happens, you just hope for the best."

Most of Haiti's 9 million people are desperately poor, and after years of political instability the country has no real construction standards. In November 2008, following the collapse of a school in Petionville, the mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated about 60 percent of the buildings were shoddily built and unsafe in normal circumstances.

Tuesday's quake was felt in the Dominican Republic, which shares a border with Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, and some panicked residents in the capital of Santo Domingo fled from their shaking homes. But no major damage was reported there. In eastern Cuba, houses shook but there were also no reports of significant damage.

"We felt it very strongly and I would say for a long time. We had time to evacuate," said Monsignor Dionisio Garcia, archbishop of Santiago.

The damage in Haiti, however, was clearly vast.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington that U.S. Embassy personnel were "literally in the dark" after power failed.

"They reported structures down. They reported a lot of walls down. They did see a number of bodies in the street and on the sidewalk that had been hit by debris. So clearly, there's going to be serious loss of life in this," he said.

The Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut, said at least two Americans working at its Haitian aid mission were believed trapped in rubble.

With phone service erratic, much of the early communication came from social media such as Twitter. Richard Morse, a well-known musician who manages the famed Olafson Hotel, kept up a stream of dispatches on the aftershocks and damage reports. The news, based mostly on second-hand reports and photos, was disturbing, with people screaming in fear and roads blocked with debris. Belair, a slum even in the best of times, was said to be "a broken mess."

"Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Henry Bahn, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official visiting Port-au-Prince. "The sky is just gray with dust.

Bahn said there were rocks strewn about and he saw a ravine where several homes had stood: "It's just full of collapsed walls and rubble and barbed wire."

In the community of Thomassin, just outside Port-au-Prince, Alain Denis said neighbors told him the only road to the capital had been cut and phones were all dead so it was hard to determine the extent of the damage.

"At this point, everything is a rumor," he said. "It's dark. It's nighttime."

Jocelyn Valcin, a resident of Boynton Beach, Florida, who flew in to Miami International Airport from Port-au-Prince on Tuesday evening, said he was at the airport when the earthquake hit.

"The whole building was cracked down," Valcin said. "The whole outside deteriorated."

Former President Bill Clinton, the U.N.'s special envoy for Haiti, issued a statement saying his office would do whatever he could to help the nation recover and rebuild.

"My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti," he said.

The United States was sending disaster rescue teams and President Barack Obama said the U.S. stood ready to help Haiti. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said from Honolulu that the U.S. was offering full assistance — civilian and military.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said his government planned to send a military aircraft carrying canned foods, medicine and drinking water and also would dispatch a team of 50 rescue workers.

Mexico, which suffered a devastating earthquake in 1985 that killed some 10,000 people, was sending a team including doctors, search and rescue dogs and infrastructure damage experts, said Salvador Beltran, the undersecretary of foreign relations for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Haitian musician Wyclef Jean urged his fans to donate to earthquake relief efforts: "We must think ahead for the aftershock, the people will need food, medicine, shelter, etc.," Jean said on his Web site.

Eva DeHart at the humanitarian organization For Haiti With Love in Palm Harbor, Florida, said colleagues at the group's base in Cap Haitien reported that northern town was spared damage. But she said damage to government buildings in the capital would make coordinating aid difficult.

In Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood, dozens of people gathered at the Veye-Yo community center, where a pastor led them in prayer. Members embraced each other as they tried to contact relatives back home.

Tony Jeanthenor said he had succeeded in reaching a family friend in Haiti who told of hearing people cry out for help from under debris.

"The level of anxiety is high," Jeanthenor said. "Haiti has been through trauma since 2004, from coup d'etat to hurricanes, now earthquakes."

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In pictures: Haitian earthquake

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World Rushes to Haiti's Aid After Devastating Quake

www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,671795,00.html#ref=nlint



Collapsed buildings, impassable streets, survivors trying to free loved ones from the rubble with their bare hands -- the impoverished Caribbean state of Haiti is in chaos following Tuesday's deadly earthquake. The world is scrambling to organize an enormous relief effort amid fears that thousands have died.

The world began rushing emergency aid such as mobile hospitals, rescue teams with search dogs and digging equipment to Haiti on Wednesday after the impoverished Caribbean nation was struck by a devastating earthquake, leaving hundreds, possibly thousands of people dead.


Some 18 hours after the quake, there was still no reliable estimate for the extent of the damage or the number of dead and injured among the 2.5 million inhabitants of the capital Port-au-Prince and its surrounding areas.

Photo Gallery

News footage showed injured people walking through the streets in a daze covered in white dust and crying out for help, and survivors desperately trying to dig loved ones out of the rubble. Much of the telephone system has collapsed, there are power outages in many areas and huge pieces of debris are blocking the streets.

The epicenter was just 15 kilometers from the capital, Port-au-Prince and just 10 kilometers below the surface, which exacerbated the destructive force of the 7.0 magnitude quake.

'Haiti Needs to Pray'

The medical system, insufficient even before the disaster, was close to collapsing, reports said. "The hospitals cannot handle all these victims," said Louis-Gerard Gilles, a doctor and former senator, as he helped survivors. "Haiti needs to pray. We all need to pray together."

Many buildings collapsed like houses of cards. Construction standards are chronically inadequate in this bitterly poor and politically unstable country which gained independence from France in 1804 after a revolt by slaves. But even the most sturdily-built structures such as the presidential palace, ministries and the city's cathedral failed to withstand the quake.

Photo Gallery

Several hospitals have been destroyed. German aid group Action Medeor said two hospitals had collapsed in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville alone.

A large luxury hotel, the Montana, was also brought down and some 200 tourists and foreign workers who were staying there are missing. The five-storey headquarters of the UN mission in Haiti was also destroyed and up to 250 members of staff were unaccounted for, including the Tunisian head of the mission, Hedi Annabi.

The international Red Cross said that up to 3 million people -- 30 per cent of the population -- had been affected by the quake.

World Pledges Help

US President Barack Obama on Wednesday vowed "unwavering support" to help Haiti recover from the quake, Reuters reported. He told journalists that he had directed his administration to provide swift, coordinated help to save lives. USAID, the government aid agency, said it was sending search-and-rescue team of at least 72 personnel and six rescue dogs.

In Berlin, the German government set up a crisis committee to coordinate the German aid response and offered €1 million in immediate assistance. "The government will assist the Republic of Haiti in every possible way," Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said.

German aid organizations called on the German population to make donations for Haiti. A spokesman for the charity Deutsche Caritas said: "The people urgently need our help."

The German Red Cross said it was preparing to dispatch a mobile hospital. It's not yet clear yet whether aid can be brought in via Port-au-Prince's airport, though, because there are conflicting reports about damage to it.

France, which has close ties with its former colony, said it was sending two aircraft with aid supplies and rescue teams. A UK team was due to leave Gatwick Airport and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that the UK was "ready to provide whatever humanitarian assistance is required".

In Rome, Pope Benedict XVI called for a generous global response and said that the Catholic Church would use its global aid organisation to meet the most pressing needs of the population. The majority of Haiti's population is Catholic.

Risk of Aftershocks

The aid effort is set to be hampered not only by the lack of communications and the devastated infrastructure but also by aftershocks expected in the coming days.

Karel Zelenka, the head of the aid group Catholic Relief Services in Port-au-Prince, said that "there must be thousands of people dead," a spokeswoman for the aid group told the Associated Press.

Joseph Guyler Delva, a Reuters reporter in Port-au-Prince, said: "People were screaming 'Jesus, Jesus' and running in all directions. It's total chaos."

Deforestation has made the hills surrounding Port-au-Prince vulnerable to landslides and has worsened the impact of the earthquake. "Due to the soil erosion, our capital lacks a solid basement," Eduard Aime, an eyewitness, reported from Port-au-Prince. "The slums that were built on the hills completely slipped off within the mudslides."

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Another Israeli planeload of supplies for Haiti field hospital

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Within eight hours of its arrival Friday, Jan. 15, the Israeli team running the largest field hospital in Haiti had treated scores of patients. It was the only medical facility on the quake-stricken island with a functioning operating theater, which carried out three procedures on its first day. Another planeload of supplies and equipment will be sent out to restock the facility.

Sunday, Jan. 17, airplanes loaded with supplies were still circling with no place to land on the island's only international airport, as the desperate population waited on the corpse-littered streets for the water, food, medicines and other basic needs reaching them far too slowly to save lives.

The Israeli hospital, located in the city's Antoine Izmery soccer field, has a fully-equipped operating theaters, intensive care units, child and maternity wards, laboratories, an X-ray facility and pharmacy, carried in by El al jumbo jets. It is manned by the IDF Home Front Command's 250 medical staff and search-and-rescue experts famed for saving lives in former world disasters.

A third of the medical team of 40 doctors, 20 paramedics and nurses plus technical staff are reservists who volunteered for the Haiti disaster relief team. Working flat out they are treating 500 patients a day. A small Zaka team, which flew in from Mexico Friday, pulled eight survivors out of the rubble of Haiti University.

Some 40,000 of the dead have been tossed into burial pits without identification. The estimate of 200,000 dead in the disastrous earthquake of last Tuesday may never be confirmed. Some 15 locations in and around Port-au-Prince are seen to have suffered an even worst catastrophe, 70 percent of all buildings destroyed, than the capital.

Following reports of looting and fights over food, the UN ordered thousands of peacekeepers to deploy in Port-au-Prince to help organize distribution in chaotic conditions.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrives in Haiti later Sunday. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed Saturday to deliver the massive aid supplies coming from America and evacuate US citizens.

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Gangs Armed With Machetes Loot Port-Au-Prince

www.worthynews.com/top/wcbstv-com-national-haiti-earthquake-haiti-2-1427143-html/
Central Business District Resembles Hell On Earth As Bodies Pile Up And Armed Men Battle Over Food, Supplies
Much like the days after Hurricane Katrina, looting has become a problem very quickly.

The looting appears to be isolated to Port-au-Prince's old commercial center. It's an area that under normal circumstances would be filled with many shops, markets and a few homes. But on Wednesday it was a completely different scene.

It looked like a war zone.

Some of the buildings were on fire. Smoke was everywhere and there were bodies in the streets, many just quake victims lying where they were when the magnitude 7.0 blast hit.

What made the situation that much more tense was sightings of gangs of young men with machetes. On Wednesday they were seen getting into stores and taking all the supplies they could carry. The armed men were seen marching up and down the streets with machetes raised and the competition among the gangs turned quite fierce.

Fights between gangs were seen on the streets. Machetes were flailing and it was impossible to predict what would happen next.

There was no sign of police or any kind of law and order.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Food is often scarce. Now, with this tragedy, desperate people are doing whatever they have to do to eat. People were seen going into stores and rubble and taking anything they could find with them for their trip back to wherever they were camping out.

There was not a single sign of relief on Wednesday. No workers, packages or bottles of water have arrived from relief agencies. There was just nothing.

And with no running water or electricity, people are getting hungry and thirsty.

The situation is dire.

If you have family in Haiti and are having trouble reaching them, the state department can help. It has set up a hotline for Americans looking for relatives there: 1-888-407-4747.

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Outside Port-au-Prince, 'towns are absolutely destroyed'

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(CNN) -- Jacmel was the artsy town Kathryn Bolles would travel to on weekends, a respite from the bustle of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.

But when a colleague with the Save the Children organization returned from once-scenic Jacmel on Friday, Bolles said he was traumatized.

"He said it's horrible what's happened there," said Bolles, the emergency health and nutrition director for Save the Children in Haiti. "People are lost, dead, missing. Houses are down and facilities are down. It sounded similar to what we're seeing here in Port-au-Prince."

Attention has focused on Port-au-Prince since Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude quake, as it is the country's most populous city -- at more than 1.2 million people -- and has suffered tremendous devastation. Thousands of homeless victims have taken to sleeping in the streets, without food, water and medical attention. Others are buried beneath the rubble, and rescuers have miraculously pulled out survivors who were entombed by the debris.

Elsewhere, though, preliminary reports are telling of how the crisis has gripped residents beyond the capital.

"What we're hearing from text messages, from e-mails is that all along the coast going west and then down south, towns are absolutely destroyed," said Bolles, who has worked in Haiti since 1999 and spoke to CNN from Port-au-Prince. She learned of the extent of the damage from colleagues, people on the street and other aid groups.



Video: Searching for Haiti's missing People are lost, dead, missing. Houses are down and facilities are down.

--Kathryn Bolles, emergency health and nutrition director for Save the Children in Haiti
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Just to the west of Port-au-Prince is Carrefour, a city of 442,000 that felt violent shaking during the quake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Damage there is expected to be heavy -- reports have yet to come in, the agency said.

West of that is Leogane, a city, like Carrefour, that is passed on the road to Jacmel. More than 30 miles further west of the capital is Petit-Goave -- all towns, Bolles said that are reeling from the quake.

Leogane's main hospital was flattened, as were numerous other buildings, Bolles said. She said she heard the "whole town had collapsed."

Among the other areas, she said she was told an orphanage full of 1,500 children collapsed, and many people were dead or missing.

CNN has yet to independently verify damage or casualties outside the capital, but reports continue to build in bits and pieces.

About a three-hour drive south of the capital in Jacmel, there were reports of an orphanage that toppled, and of a hospital for women that collapsed, said Alana Salcer, spokeswoman for Cine Institute, a film school in Jacmel. Staff at the school and students there have written Salcer about the dire situation in that city, and even shot footage of buildings ripped open and survivors lying in streets. To keep the lights on and communication open, the school has had to rely on a generator after power lines went down.

The home of the school's editing teacher, Andrew Bigosinski, fell down a hill when the earth violently shook, and many others lost their homes, Salcer said.

Just east of Port-au-Prince, makeshift camps have been erected in the public squares of the densely populated area of Delmas, Cine Institute founder David Belle told Salcer in an e-mail shared with CNN.

Belle described a harrowing scene on the road to Port-au-Prince:

"Moving into the city ... the destruction gets worse and worse and the street is lined with piles of swollen, rotting bodies. ...Periodic road blocks have been set up by residents, protesting the lack of any aid presence and angry at stench and indecency. Huge tractors and dump trucks were just beginning to arrive and load bodies as we passed thru."

American Red Cross logistics expert and relief worker Colin Chaperone said the biggest obstacle outside the capital was getting medical treatment to the injured. Chaperone arrived in the capital Wednesday and had driven east toward the border with the Dominican Republic to escort an American Red Cross Emergency Response Unit into Haiti, said Red Cross spokesman Jonathan Aiken.

Chaperone told Aiken that about 30 minutes out of Port-au-Prince, he was still seeing significant and widespread damage. Medical care was limited, as local clinics were overwhelmed by demand, he said.

Makeshift treatment facilities were established for those who fled the capital, many of whom had broken bones and other serious injuries, Chaperone said. Exacerbating the dangerous situation was the reality that medical supplies were running out.

Roads are slowly becoming easier to navigate, but aid is still slow to get outside the capital. Bolles said that her team plans to travel as far as they can to assess the situation and offer help.

"There really needs to be a humanitarian response and it needs to be immediate," she said. "Outside of Port-au-Prince there really hasn't been anything."

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Sources: U.S. takes control of Haiti

'We are the only ones who can get things done'

www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=122199

UNITED NATIONS – Informed U.S. State Department sources tell WND that Washington has taken de-facto control of earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

"USAID has now taken control [of Haiti]," said one source. "We [the U.S.] are the only ones who can get things done."

Vice President Joe Biden told reporters at Homestead Air Force Base, Fla., where relief efforts are underway, that Haiti is a nation "that has totally collapsed."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the first White House cabinet member to arrive on the scene. She made a brief tour of the Port au Prince region on Saturday.

U.N. relief efforts, however, have been criticized as "disorganized" and "haphazard" by U.S. sources.

The U.N.'s Haiti operations center was destroyed in last week's quake. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special representative, Hedi Annabi, who remained "missing" more than four days later, was found dead Saturday. Annabi was believed to be in the complex at the time of the quake.

In a statement released Saturday evening, Ban called Annabi the "gold standard" of international civil servants.

UNICEF, which operated separately from the U.N. system, saw its headquarters survive, but was also severely impacted because many of its personnel were in the field at the time of the quake. A substantial number of those still remain unaccounted for.

U.S. sources confirm to WND that Haitian relief efforts could easily surpass $1 billion in the next few months, much of that aid being financed by Washington.

The U.N. has already announced a $550 million international emergency fundraising drive.

Not only could the rescue and rebuilding efforts reach billions of dollars, but they could also take years to accomplish.

U.S. sources point out that even today, more than four years later, New Orleans is still rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina.

Meanwhile, in a hasty publicity move, Ban Ki-moon will fly this weekend for a brief one-day "tour" of Haiti.

It is not clear what Ban can do. U.N. sources tell WND that Ban will not venture beyond a few miles from Port au Prince airport.

He has no intention of trying to reach the city of Jacmel, which sources say is in worse shape than Port au Prince.

Ban's special Haitian envoy, Bill Clinton, elected not to accompany the U.N. chief to Port au Prince. Speculation says that Hillary did not want to be "upstaged" by the former president.

Meanwhile, U.N. sources admit that part of the problem that now exists in Haiti squarely falls on the United Nations and the international community.

Virtually nothing of substance has been done to build a credible infrastructure in Haiti since the military government of Gen. Raul Cedras was overthrown by the Clinton administration military invasion in 1994.

More than 20,000 U.S. troops participated in the 1994 naval and air campaign.

The U.S. forced Cedras to flee the country, but since, Haiti has seen its "elected" governments vacillate between Jean Betrand Aristide and his political nemesis Rene Preval, resulting in a near political paralysis.

Preval saw his presidential palace collapse last week, fled to the Port au Prince airport (where he now resides) and has only made some carefully orchestrated "trips" into the city.

Preval, it was pointed out by U.S. officials, is president of a government that does not exist.

Coincidentally, CNN showed video on Friday of a collapsed and deserted Haitian parliament building.

Of more immediate concern is the expected influx of Haitian refugees into the U.S.

"Months and years" of continuous U.S. aid to Haiti was mentioned by President Barack Obama at the White House on Saturday. Obama announced that former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton will lead U.S. fundraising efforts to aid displaced Haitians. For President Bush, it was his first return to the White House since leaving office a year ago.

"They [Bush and Clinton] will send an unmistakable message to the Haitian people," Obama explained.

"We are in it for the long haul," Biden added. "It is going to take years."

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Haiti returns to calm after new quake

news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-01/21/c_13145161.htm

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- The quake-devastated Haitian capital Port-au-Prince has returned to calm after a strong aftershock on Wednesday morning.

The tremor measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale jolted Port-au-Prince at 6:03 a.m. local time (1103 GMT) on Wednesday and was the strongest one after last week's 7.3-magnitude quake in Haiti.

In spite of this, the aftershock did not cause any major new destruction or slowed the ongoing aid work.

But it still aroused panic among residents in Port-au-Prince, who have not recovered from last week's powerful quake.

Witnesses said that when the quake occurred, people ran to the streets and squares, while rescuers tried to direct them.

The epicenter of the quake, with a depth of 9.9 km, was located 60 km west of the capital, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The USGS said Wednesday's aftershock was strongly felt in the southern city of Jacmel, which the international humanitarian aid has failed to reach due to the destruction of the highway linking it to Port-au-Prince.

Only the navy of the Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighboring country, has managed to send medicines and food to Jacmel by sea.

Last week's earthquake has killed 75,000 people and injured 250,000, according to the Haitian government. However, the figures may rise as the rescue work continues.

[Paddy by Grace]

Death Toll Now at 111,000

Rescuers in Haiti say they've found survivor in rubble

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Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- French rescue workers say they have located a person buried under rubble who has survived the earthquake that struck Haiti 11 days ago.

The team, assisted by Greek and American workers, told CNN that they have established communication with the 24-year-old man at the scene of the Hotel Napoli Inn.

The workers initially used their hands to move debris before putting heavier machinery to use.

The man's brothers said they reported hearing tapping from within the ruins of the hotel for several days but struggled to get authorities to the scene. A Greek journalist said he alerted Greek rescue workers after hearing the tapping.

Earlier Saturday, the government announced that it has ended the search-and-rescue phase of its response to the disaster and that more than 111,000 people had died in the quake and its aftermath.

The government's figure, released by the United Nations late Friday, is the first precise death toll for the magnitude 7.0 quake that struck on January 12. It said 111,481 people were confirmed dead.

It is the worst death toll from an earthquake since the 2004 Asian tsunami, and the second-highest death toll from an earthquake in more than three decades, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Some 609,000 people have also been left homeless in and around the capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

President Rene Preval joined hundreds of other mourners Saturday at the funeral of Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince.

"He was a good man," Preval said, declining to address questions about his own handling of Haiti's crisis. Full story

A two-hour "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon Friday night featured musical performances by top acts and a phone bank staffed by dozens of celebrities.

Proceeds from the telethon will benefit Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, UNICEF, the U.N. World Food Programme, the Yele Haiti Foundation and the Clinton Bush Haiti Foundation.

Organizers did not say how much money the telethon had raised.

Before the search-and-rescue effort ended Friday afternoon, OCHA said, rescuers had managed to pull 132 people alive from the rubble.

That number did not include two rescues Friday. An Israeli team pulled a 22-year-old man alive from the ruins of a three-story building, and doctors in Port-au-Prince were treating a 69-year-old woman they said was rescued Friday morning.

Doctors said the woman was "critically ill" after being trapped for so long and that she may not survive.

About 120 to 140 flights a day are now regularly arriving at the single-runway Port-au-Prince airport, compared with 25 the day after the quake struck last week, OCHA said. To relieve congestion at the airport, humanitarian cargo is being moved to a forward dispatch area at one end of the runway.

The Las Americas airport in Santo Domingo, in the neighboring Dominican Republic, is starting to report congestion as it becomes increasingly useful as an alternative airport, OCHA said. It will now be open overnight to accommodate the extra traffic, OCHA said.

The U.S. military has obtained landing rights at the Dominican Republic's air base at San Isidro, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) east of Port-au-Prince.

Port-au-Prince's main port is now working at 30 percent capacity, which should increase in the coming days, OCHA said. The port is only handling humanitarian cargo and is still closed to commercial traffic, it said.

Haiti is negotiating with the Dominican Republic to use the port at Barahona --about midway between the two countries' capitals -- for more humanitarian deliveries, OCHA said.

Those managing the land transport of supplies will need fuel, and OCHA said there is enough in Haiti to last an additional 18 to 19 days. But it said it expects no shortage of fuel because supplies of fuel will be able to enter the port during that time.

One concern with cross-border traffic is the unauthorized departure of Haitian children, OCHA said.

Charities and aid groups have said in recent days they are concerned about the danger of child trafficking after the earthquake. Groups including Save the Children and World Vision have called for a halt to adoptions, saying many children may appear to be orphaned but in fact have simply been separated from their families.

"If children must be evacuated from Haiti because their protection needs cannot be met in country, the evacuation must be carefully documented, the children must be registered with the proper authorities and all efforts must be made to reunify them with family before any adoption proceedings are considered," the U.S.-based Women's Refugee Commission said.

The number of unaccompanied children needing support is greater than the capacity to respond, OCHA said. Authorities are working with unaccompanied children who are being released from hospitals, it said.

There are now 47 hospitals, 11 mobile clinics and two floating hospitals -- from the United States and Mexico -- in and around Port-au-Prince, OCHA said.

One of those floating hospitals is the USNS Comfort, a U.S. Navy vessel just off the Haitian coast. Capt. James Ware, the commanding officer, oversees a team of 80 doctors, including 24 surgeons and 140 nurses.

Ware said Friday that the hospital had received about 240 patients over 36 hours. In the next few days, he said, he expected the ship to treat about 150 patients a day.

Since the start of the disaster response, the World Food Programme has distributed more than 1,167,000 rations to Haitians in the quake's aftermath. Most of the rations have gone to Port-au-Prince, but many have also gone to the towns of Jacmel, about 20 miles away on Haiti's southern coast, and Leogane, about 17 miles west of the capital, OCHA said.

More than 580,000 people have received donations of water from UNICEF -- five liters (1.3 gallons) per person, OCHA said. The International Committee of the Red Cross has delivered 30,000 liters of water, OCHA said.

U.N. officials are talking with Haiti's national water authority about how to meet Haitians' increasing water needs, OCHA said. Among the things they're considering are private water distribution and creating new wells and boreholes.

Some 50 aftershocks of magnitude 4.5 or higher have hit Haiti since last week's earthquake, according to OCHA.

There are now concerns that in some Port-au-Prince neighborhoods, including the slum of Cite Soleil, prisoners who escaped after the earthquake have returned and are attempting to reconstitute gangs, the U.N. said.

[Paddy by Grace]

Haiti awash in Christian aid, evangelism

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35262608/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake/

In quake crisis, there were sure to be some ungodly fumbles

The horrific destruction and human suffering in Haiti exert an almost irresistible pull on U.S. Christian missionaries eager to help. But as the jailing last week of 10 missionaries from a small Baptist church in Idaho illustrates, best intentions don’t always translate into good deeds in the chaotic aftermath of the monster earthquake.

Many mission groups provide essential services for Haitians — indeed some have evolved into key service providers, working alongside nonprofit groups and the U.N. to fill gaps that the Haitian government can’t fill.

But other missions, even when well-meaning, risk running afoul of Haiti’s culture and laws.

“There’s an issue that is coming up a lot right now,” said Laurent Dubois, a professor of history and romance studies at Duke University and an expert on Haiti. “It’s the difference between wanting to help and being able to do good. Most don’t speak any Creole, or have the cultural knowledge. … (As a result) they are going to be very surprised by what they see in Haiti.”

Patrick McCormick, a spokesman for UNICEF, said that in the case of the Idaho church members, naiveté apparently blinded them to the legal implications of their actions. They were charged with kidnapping after being accused of trying to take 33 Haitian children across the border to the Dominican Republic without proper documentation.

“Just because there’s a natural disaster, you don’t start cutting corners on a serious and complicated process like international adoption,” he said.

Haiti has been a popular destination for missionaries at least since 1804, when Haitians threw off French rule. Catholicism, which had been imposed on them by the colonial power, was left on an uncertain footing, and the country became a spiritual battleground. Various Christian denominations and sects aimed to win converts and prevent Haitians from reverting to Voodoo, a religion adapted from the beliefs of their African ancestors.

“Every church and mission group has a presence in Haiti,” said Wendy Norvelle, spokeswoman for the International Mission Board, which supports foreign missions for the Southern Baptist Church. “It’s very, very, very saturated with those who would want to go and share God’s love and do hands-on ministries providing humanitarian relief.”

There’s no comprehensive count of missionaries in Haiti, because they are dispatched by so many different groups, and the number is always changing.

Before the earthquake, there were about 1,700 long-term, professional missionaries in Haiti, according to Bert Hickman, research associate at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. He said that number is about average for Latin and South American countries with populations similar to Haiti’s 10 million.

But that count doesn’t include the thousands of American missionaries who go to Haiti each year on trips that last just a few weeks or a few months, drawn by Haiti’s extreme poverty and its proximity, just a two-hour flight from Miami.

Some of these missionaries go on their own. Some are sponsored by churches or denominations, or through groups like Campus Crusade for Christ, which sends college students all over the world. Since the quake, there has been another wave of trips thrown together by churches to help needy Haitians and to check on mission properties supported by their churches.

What they do
Their missions vary. Some are there exclusively to evangelize and “plant churches.” Indeed, even small villages in Haiti will sometimes have six or seven churches built by missionaries of different denominations.

Others prefer to convey their faith though deeds rather than words: digging wells, filling teeth or teaching soil conservation, for instance.

This is the spirit espoused by members of Lifechurch, a nondenominational church profiled by msnbc.com last month when members rushed to Haiti to check on the orphanage they run in Port-au-Prince. The Allentown, Pa., church regularly sends congregation members on missions to the developing world to install water filtration systems and build school cafeterias, playgrounds and clinics.

“Our main focus is to … show the people we really care about them,” said church business administrator David Jones. “If we have time to talk about Jesus then we do it. (But) our philosophy is that you cannot effectively evangelize if you don’t show you care by dealing with people’s real needs.”

The desire to help the most vulnerable of Haiti’s earthquake victims — its children — is especially strong.

U.S. churches run and support hundreds of orphanages and schools in the country.

Even before the quake, an estimated 15 percent of all children in Haiti were said to be orphaned or abandoned. About 200,000 of these children lived in institutions, and the rest were fostered, living with relatives or living on the street. That number has risen sharply since the quake, though it is not clear by how much.

The huge population of vulnerable kids makes them susceptible to abuse, including the trafficking of Haitian children into the sex trade and slavery.

Missionaries, aid workers and U.N. peacekeepers have been implicated in such crimes. In a U.S. federal court on Feb. 2, a Colorado missionary who has worked at a school for Haitian street children, faced charges of sexually abusing up to 18 boys in Haiti, luring them with cash and other rewards, and threatening them with expulsion if they did not comply.

Seeing even greater risk in the chaos after the earthquake, Haiti’s government issued a warning to foreigners who were working with Haitian children not to rush adoptions and not to take them out of the country without complete legal documentation. UNICEF called for measures to prevent children from disappearing and potentially falling prey to traffickers. And the U.S. State Department has warned that children could fall victim to pedophiles.

Vying for souls
In Haiti, many Christian and nondenominational groups work together, but there are rivalries as well.

Some, evangelical Protestants in particular, are in a pitched battle with Voodoo in Haiti, which they view as satanic. As evangelist Pat Robertson put it shortly after the earthquake, Haitians’ adherence to Voodoo was a “pact with the devil” that caused the disaster.

Some Protestants also are vying for the souls of Catholic Haitians. The rivalry is in part a reflection of a historical global competition between the major Christian groups. But it is heightened because many Haitian Catholics also observe Voodoo traditions.

“Most Voodoo ceremonies begin with Catholic prayers,” says Dubois of Duke University. “At this point Catholic priests don’t spend much energy trying to stop Voodoo.”

That doesn’t sit well with groups like Campus Crusade for Christ, which includes this description of Haiti’s spiritual landscape on its Web site:

“An estimated 75 percent of Catholics are also increasingly involved in voodoo, spiritism and witchcraft. … The steady growth of Protestant churches in the difficult economic and spiritual climate is cause for praise.”

Christian missions also sometimes come into conflict with other aid efforts in the country.

Bryan Schaaf, a former Peace Corps worker, said he ran into all kinds of missionaries when he was living in Haiti from 2000 to 2002. He recalled one American missionary man living in his village who quietly visited rural areas and helped Haitians build wells.

“They built this large network of wells that wouldn’t otherwise have been there,” said Schaaf. “It was a missionary family that was well accepted by the community, and using sound development principals.”

Purging evil, providing water
On the other hand, he said, another American missionary family in the village seemed to focus on countering his own efforts in health education. After he talked to young people in the village about birth control and prevention of AIDS, which is epidemic among Haitian youth, Schaaf learned that the missionaries were following up with a message of their own.

“They would hold prayer circles with these adolescents to purge the evil thoughts of condoms from their minds,” he said.

Schaaf, who is back in the States and spends his spare time running a nonprofit consultancy called Haiti Innovation, derided missionaries who lack understanding or respect for Haitian culture and treat the country as their “spiritual sandbox.”

“I wish I could tell you I was surprised; I’m really not,” he said of the 10 American missionaries being held in Haiti. “Many missionaries come in and think they are in a position of authority.”

Some provide vital aid
But Schaaf was quick to point out that many of the missionary organizations are not only respectful, but provide essential services.

Some relief organizations that have been pivotal since the quake in Haiti were founded on faith, he said, citing groups like Catholic Relief Services and Episcopal Faith and Development. Other groups started out evangelizing and emerged as key providers of services.

For example, he said, Partners in Health, founded by an Episcopal priest in 1987 as a community clinic, has grown into the largest medical complex in Haiti.

In this case, the conviction and willingness to work with the community turned this faith-based operation into the best medical facility in Haiti and created a model that has been replicated throughout the developing world, he said.

Or, as he put it: “No priest, no PIH.”