Haiti quake: survivors confront the devastation
Updated on 14 January 2010
Haitians have been sleeping out in parks and streets amid fears that aftershocks in the wake of Tuesday’s devastating earthquake could further damage buildings.
The bodies are too many to count: the death toll too unthinkable - Barack Obama's called it a "cruel and incomprehensible" tragedy.
Two days after Haiti's worst earthquake in two centuries - hundreds of thousands of survivors have spent another night huddled outside on the devastated streets of Port-au-Prince, too terrified to venture back inside.
There's no food: no shelter and no co-ordinated rescue plan - no medical supplies to treat the injured. Without teams of sniffer dogs and special lifting equipment - it's not known how many people are still buried alive - how many thousands are missing.
The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the calamity has affected some three million people - with tens of thousands of casualties - tens of thousands of buildings collapsed. She's pledged "long-term" US aid to help Haiti cope with the immediate crisis and beyond.
In the meantime, though, in the desperate search for survivors - rescuers are using their bare hands to search through rubble - clawing at chunks of concrete as faint voices call out from the ruins of the destroyed city.
Hospitals are inundated by a vast influx of casualties: thousands of corpses litter the streets. According to one Red Cross worker - there aren't even enough body bags to cope.
Among the countless dead: the chief of the UN mission in Haiti and the archbishop of Port au Prince. Dozens of the United Nation's own peacekeepers have been killed - hundreds more are missing.
Gone too - the country's fragile infrastructure - its presidential palace, its cathedral, its parliament, schools and hospitals - all destroyed in the 7.0 magnitude quake.
With no electricity - this already grindingly poor city has been plunged into darkness: the next danger - a descent into lawlessness and looting.
Urgently needed aid is on the way: and nations have pitched in to help. The World Bank has pledged $100m of emergency relief - the International Red Cross has launched a $10 appeal.
The United States is sending 300 medical personnel immediately, with another 12,000 on standby. Experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also on their way to monitor food and water supplies in the hope of preventing disease.
But with many roads torn apart or blocked by debris - communication networks down and the airport's control tower completely out of action - getting that aid into Haiti is a slow and difficult process.
Former US President Bill Clinton, who's the UN's special envoy to Haiti called the disaster "one of the great humanitarian emergencies in the history of the Americas". He's called for specialist rescue teams, helicopters and lifting equipment - to reach survivors before it is too late.
But there's one sound of hope arising from the darkness of this stricken city: the sound of singing - as Haitians pray for their dead and ask for God's help. As the New York Times put it - "One phrase in Creole could be heard repeatedly both inside and outside the hospital walls, as if those voicing the words were trying to make sense of the madness around them. 'Beni Swa Leternel,' they sang. Blessed be the Lord.
