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UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 19 JANUARY 2010, PART II OF III

 

US MILITARY AIRDROPS SUPPLIES INTO HAITI

 

(01/19/2010 | 09:52 AM )

 

WASHINGTON— The US military has airdropped water and food into Haiti after earlier ruling out such a delivery method as too risky.

 

Maj. Tanya Bradsher, a spokeswoman for the US Southern Command, said an Air Force C-17 flying out of Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, on Monday dropped 14,500 Meals Ready to Eat (abbreviation: MREs) and 15,000 liters of water into a secured area 5 miles (8 kilometers) northeast of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

 

Military officials are considering whether the method was successful enough to be used throughout Haiti.

 

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that early airdrops were ruled out because they might do more harm than good, possibly triggering riots if there was no structure on the ground to distribute the supplies.

- AP

 

 

HELP STEPS UP... SO DOES SCALE OF HAITI TRAGEDY

 

(01/19/2010 | 10:47 AM)

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The staggering scope of Haiti's nightmare came into sharper focus Monday as authorities estimated 200,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless in the quake-ravaged heart of this tragic land, where injured survivors still died in the streets, doctors pleaded for help and looters slashed at one another in the rubble.

 

The world pledged more money, food, medicine and police. Some 2,000 US Marines steamed into nearby waters. And ex-president Bill Clinton, special UN envoy, flew in to offer support. Six days after the earthquake struck, search teams still pulled buried survivors from the ruins.

 

But hour by hour the unmet needs of hundreds of thousands grew.

 

Overwhelmed surgeons appealed for anesthetics, scalpels, saws for cutting off crushed limbs. Uncounted hundreds of survivors sought to cram onto buses headed out of town. In downtown streets, others begged for basics.

 

"Have we been abandoned? Where is the food?" shouted one man, Jean Michel Jeantet.

 

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) said it expected to boost operations from feeding 67,000 people on Sunday to 97,000 on Monday. But it needs 100 million prepared meals over the next 30 days, and it appealed for more government donations.

 

"I know that aid cannot come soon enough," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in New York after returning from Haiti.

 

"Unplug the bottlenecks," he urged.

 

In one step to reassure frustrated aid groups, the US military agreed to give aid deliveries priority over military flights at the now-US-run airport here, the WFP announced in Rome. The Americans' handling of civilian flights had angered some humanitarian officials.

 

Looting and violence flared again Monday, as hundreds clambered over the broken walls of shops to grab anything they could — including toothpaste, now valuable for lining nostrils against the stench of Port-au-Prince's dead. Police fired into the air as young men fought each other over rum and beer with broken bottles and machetes.

 

Hard-pressed medical teams sometimes had to take time away from quake victims to deal with gunshot wounds, said Loris de Filippi of Doctors Without Borders. In the Montrissant neighborhood, Red Cross doctors working in shipping containers and saying they "cannot cope" lost 50 patients over two days, said international Red Cross spokesman Simon Schorno.

 

Amid the debris and the smoke of bodies being burned, dozens of international rescue teams dug on in search of buried survivors. And on Monday afternoon, some 140 hours after the quake, they pulled two Haitian women alive from a collapsed university building. At a destroyed downtown bank, another team believed it was just hours from saving a trapped employee.

 

The latest casualty report, from the European Commission citing Haitian government figures, doubled previous estimates of the dead from the magnitude-7.0 quake, to approximately 200,000, with some 70,000 bodies recovered and trucked off to mass graves.

 

 

If accurate, that would make Haiti's catastrophe about as deadly as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed an estimated 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

 

 

European Commission analysts estimate 250,000 were injured and 1.5 million were made homeless. Masses are living under plastic sheets in makeshift camps and in dust-covered automobiles, or had taken to the road seeking out relatives in the safer countryside.

 

 

On the capital's southern edge, hundreds of people struggled to get onto brightly painted "tap-tap" buses heading out of town.

 

"We've got no more food and no more house, so leaving is the only thing to do," said Livena Livel, 22, fleeing with her 1-year-old daughter and six other relatives to her father's house in Les Cayes, near Haiti's western tip.

"At least over there we can farm for food," she said.

 

She said she was spending her last cash on the "insanely expensive" bus fare, jacked up to the equivalent of $7.70, three days' pay for most Haitians, because gasoline prices had doubled.

 

The European Union and its individual governments boosted their aid pledges for Haiti to euro422 million ($606 million) in emergency and long-term aid, on top of at least $100 million pledged by the US.

 

A dirt-poor nation long at the bottom of the heap, Haiti will need years or decades of expanded aid to rebuild. After meeting with Haitian President Rene Preval and other international representatives in the neighboring Dominican Republic, Dominican President Leonel Fernandez said Haiti would need $10 billion over five years.

 

For the moment, however, front-line relief workers want simply to get food and water to the hungry and thirsty.

 

The UN humanitarian chief, John Holmes, said in New York not all 15 planned UN food distribution points were up and running yet. "That's a question of people, trucks, fuel, but the aid is scaling up very rapidly," he said.

 

The priorities are clearing roads, ensuring security at UN distribution points, getting this city's seaport working again and bringing in more trucks and helicopters, WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said in Rome.

 

Evidence of the shortfall could be found at a makeshift camp of 50,000 displaced people spread over a hillside golf course overlooking the city. Leaders there said a US 82nd Airborne Division unit had been able to deliver food to only half the people.

 

The 1,700 US troops on the ground in Port-au-Prince were to be reinforced by 2,000 Marines expected Monday off Haiti's shores aboard three amphibious landing ships. Other US help was on the way, including two US civilian crane ships that could unload cargo at the quake-damaged port.

 

Getting clean water into people's hands was still a dire concern.

"People can survive a few days without food but we must try to avoid major outbreaks of waterborne disease," said Brian Feagans, a spokesman for the aid group CARE.

 

Clinton and accompanying daughter Chelsea pitched in, helping unload cases of bottled water from their plane to a UN truck.

 

Some aid groups and foreign officials have blamed the US military for slowing down aid deliveries, saying the American units that took charge of the small Port-au-Prince airport last week gave priority to US military flights.

 

Doctors Without Borders said Monday its specialists were 48 hours behind on performing surgery for critically injured patients because three cargo planes loaded with supplies were denied clearance and forced to land almost 200 miles away in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

 

The WFP's Sheeran said things would change. She announced an agreement with the US so that "we now have the coordination mechanism to prioritize the humanitarian flights coming in."

 

At the airport, a US military spokesman said the parking ramp designed for 16 large aircraft at times was holding 40. "That's why there was gridlock," said Navy Cmdr. Chris Lounderman. He said about 100 flights a day were now landing.

 

The US Air Force itself resorted to an air drop of aid Monday. A C-17 from Pope Air Force Base, N.C., parachuted pallets of food and water into an area outside Port-au-Prince secured by US forces. The Americans have been reluctant to use air drops for fear of drawing unruly crowds.

 

There remained a "huge demand for lifesaving surgery for those who suffered terrible injuries," Doctors Without Borders reported. The US-based Partners in Health, coordinating aid at Port-au-Prince's central hospital, reported "a desperate need for all the resources required to run a hospital," including surgical instruments, anesthesia gear, alcohol, sutures, and saws.

 

Clinton, visiting the hospital, reported its staff had to use vodka to sterilize equipment. "It's astonishing what the Haitians have been able to accomplish," he said.

 

More than 1,000 patients awaited surgery at the hospital, Partners in Health said. Right outside the US-run airport, one man died as Navy helicopters scrambled to evacuate patients to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, the military reported.

 

Across the city, thousands of abandoned bodies had been picked up by government crews, but residents dragged still others to crossroads, hoping municipal garbage trucks or aid groups would deal with them.

 

Looting and violence added to the casualties. Riot police opened fire — mostly in the air — to break up a mob of several hundred fighting over rum bottles in a burning shop. One teenage boy was hit in the thigh by a shotgun blast. "Friends! Save me! Save me!" he cried, curled up in a pool of blood, one foot almost severed. A medical aid truck happened by and picked him up.

 

The ranks of Haitian police and UN peacekeepers trying to restore order in this stricken city had themselves been decimated in the quake, which destroyed the UN headquarters.

 

In New York on Monday, U.N. chief Ban asked for 1,500 more UN police and 2,000 more peacekeepers to join the 9,000 or so U.N. security personnel in Haiti. Alain Le Roy, the UN peacekeeping chief, said a "tremendous" number of requests had come in to escort humanitarian convoys. Haitian police had returned to the streets in only "limited numbers," he said.

 

The Security Council approved the reinforcements on Tuesday.

 

- AP

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Updates of the situation in HAITI on 19 January 2010, Part III of III

 

Body of RP peacekeeper in Haiti recovered - AFP

 

(01/19/2010 | 11:40 AM)

 

The body of a Filipino United Nations peacekeeper was retrieved from the rubble of the collapsed Christopher Hotel, bringing to two the number of Philippine fatalities following the deadly earthquake that rocked the impoverished Caribbean island nation of Haiti.

 

At a press conference in Camp Aguinaldo, military information chief Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner Jr. said the body of Petty Officer 3 Pearly Panangui was pulled out at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday from the second floor of the hotel, which houses the United Nations Peacekeeping headquarters in Haiti.

 

In a prepared prayer, Brawner, on behalf of the Philippine military, paid tribute to Panangui and to all servicemen performing their duties outside the Philippines.

 

"They have shown a culture of peace, heroism, and dedication, and commitment to serve even outside of their office especially at this crucial time," he said. "They may be gone but they will forever be in our hearts."

 

At the time of the killer quake, a total of 462 Filipinos were in Haiti - 290 civilians and 172 military and police peacekeepers.

 

The announcement came hours after the first Filipino casualty was reported by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

 

The body of Jerome Yap, executive assistant to the deputy head of the UN mission in Haiti, was found at 6:15 p.m. Monday, Philippine time.

 

Yap's body was recovered from the site of the collapsed hotel, a few hours after other remains were found, including those of mission head Hedi Annabi, deputy Luis Tacosta and Chinese Ambassador to Haiti Shulin Wang.

 

Yap's sibling based in New York is already coordinating with the UN regarding the arrangements for the transport of his remains.

 

Yap's family in Pampanga has already been informed and would be left to decide on whether to bring his remains back to the Philippines.

 

With the retrieval of the remains of the two Filipinos, four Filipinos, who are believed trapped in a number of establishments in Haiti, remain missing.

 

They are Sergeant Janice Arocena and Sergeant Eustacio Bermudez, both members of the RP peacekeeping force in Haiti; and Grace Fabian and Geraldine Lalican, who both worked at the Caribbean Supermarket.

 

- Mark Merueñas/RSJ, GMANews.TV

 

 

HAITI CHAOS HAMPERS AID DELIVERY; DEATH TOLL RISES

 

(01/19/2010 | 04:58 PM GMA News.TV)

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Relief workers say pockets of violence in Haiti's devastated capital are hindering a slow increase in much-needed aid delivery, and some residents have banded together to protect the few possessions they have left.

 

As thousands of others head to the countryside, people in one hillside Port-au-Prince district blocked off access to their street with cars and asked local young men to patrol for looters.

"We never count on the government here," said Tatony Vieux, 29. "Never."

 

A week after the magnitude-7.0 quake struck, Tuesday dawned with new potential for reinforcements to aid in security and disaster relief. The United Nations Security Council was expected to approve additional peacekeeping forces. Some 2,000 US Marines who arrived in the region a day earlier were parked offshore on ships.

 

But the scope of catastrophe had widened dramatically. The latest casualty report, from the European Commission citing Haitian government figures, doubled previous estimates of the dead to approximately 200,000, with some 70,000 bodies recovered and trucked off to mass graves.

 

The port remains blocked. Distribution of food, water and supplies from the city's lone airport to the needy are increasing but still remained a work in progress, frustrating many survivors who sleep in the streets and outdoor camps of tens of thousands. European Commission analysts estimate 250,000 were injured and 1.5 million were made homeless.

 

"I simply don't understand what is taking the foreigners so long," said Raymond Saintfort, a pharmacist who brought two suitcases of aspirin and antiseptics to the ruins of a nursing home where dozens of residents suffered.

 

The UN humanitarian chief, John Holmes, said not all 15 planned UN food distribution points were up and running yet. The UN World Food Program said it expected to boost operations to feeding 97,000 on Monday. But it needs 100 million prepared meals over the next 30 days, and it appealed for more government donations.

 

In one step to reassure frustrated aid groups, the US military agreed to give aid deliveries priority over military flights at the now-US-run airport here, according to the WFP. The Americans' handling of civilian flights had angered some humanitarian officials.

 

At the airport, US Navy Cmdr. Chris Lounderman said about 100 flights a day were now landing.

 

Still, the US military resorted to an air drop from C-17 transport planes Monday, parachuting pallets of supplies to a secured area outside the city rather than landing and unloading at the airport.

 

Meanwhile, rescuers continued finding survivors.

 

International rescue teams working together pulled two Haitian women from a collapsed university building, using machinery commonly nicknamed "jaws of life" to cut away debris and allow rescuers to pull them out on stretchers. A sister of one of the survivors shouted praises to God when the women emerged.

 

In the city's Bourdon area, a large team of French, Dominican and Panamanian rescuers using high-tech detection equipment said they heard heartbeats underneath the rubble of a bank building and worked into the night to try and rescue a survivor. The husband of a missing woman watched from a crowd of onlookers. "I'm going to be here until I find my wife, I'll keep it up until I find her, dead or alive," said Witchar Longfosse.

 

Elsewhere, overwhelmed surgeons appealed for anesthetics, scalpels, and saws for cutting off crushed limbs. Former US President Bill Clinton, visiting one hospital, reported its staff had to use vodka to sterilize equipment. "It's astonishing what the Haitians have been able to accomplish," he said.

 

Front-line relief workers made some headway. By 7 a.m. Monday, an Israeli military field hospital had treated 196 people. "We understand it's a drop in a big sea," said facility spokesman Avi Berman.

 

Violence added to complications in places. Medical relief workers said they were treating gunshot wounds in addition to broken bones and other quake-related injuries. Nighttime was especially perilous and locals were forming night brigades and machete-armed mobs to fight bandits across the capital.

 

"It gets too dangerous," said Remi Rollin, an armed private security guard hired by a shopkeeper to ward off looters. "After sunset, police shoot on sight."

 

In the sprawling Cite Soleil slum, gangsters are reassuming control after escaping from the city's notorious main penitentiary and police urge citizens to take justice into their own hands.

"If you don't kill the criminals, they will all come back," a Haitian police officer shouted over a loudspeaker.

 

Alain Le Roy, the UN peacekeeping chief, cited the often unruly crowds at points where food and water is being distributed and said Haitian police had returned to the streets in only "limited numbers."

 

A Security Council vote was expected to add 1,500 more UN police and 2,000 more peacekeepers to join the 9,000 or so UN security personnel in Haiti.. LATEST NEWS: APPROVED.

 

Thousands are streaming out of Port-au-Prince, crowding aboard buses headed toward countryside villages. Charlemagne Ulrick planned to stay behind after putting his three children on a truck for an all-day journey to Haiti's northwestern peninsula. "They have to go and save themselves," said Ulrick, a dentist. "I don't know when they're coming back."

 

US and Haitian officials also warned any efforts of Haitians to reach the United States by boat would be thwarted. Haiti's ambassador in Washington, Raymond Joseph, recorded a message in Creole to his countrymen, urging them not to leave.

 

"If you think you will reach the US and all the doors will be wide open to you, that's not at all the case," Joseph said, according to a transcript on America.gov, a State Department Web site. "And they will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from."

 

- AP

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UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 20 JANUARY 2010

 

Danish Text-TV and Swedish Text-TV (SVT Text):

Haiti's embassador to the USA criticises the Americans for airdropping food supplies from helicopters to the Haitians in a secured area North-East of Port-au-Prince. "The strongest / fittest benefit from the airdrop of food supplies from helicopters. Haiti needs stable aid. It should be possible to find areas where it is safe for the helicopters to land so that food and water can be distributed to the needy Haitians." The US military considers airdrop of food supplies from helicopters across Haiti.

 

News from TV2 News (Danish TV channel), Danish text-TV, Swedish Text-TV aka. SVT Text and German Text-TV (ARDtext + ZDFtext):

25 year old woman rescued - she was lying under the rubble of a supermarket.

 

69-year-old woman rescued out of rubble of Haiti's Catholic church. "I'm alright. Only problem is that my feet hurt", she told the media.

 

A three-week-old baby girl dug free in the rubble of a collapsed house in the town of Jacmel. It took rescuers 5 hours to reach her and get her out. According to her uncle, the baby is 23 days old. She is relatively healthy/sound and in a good condition all things considered. The baby has been taken to an American field hospital.

 

 

SVT text:

121 rescued from rubble since the devastating quake on 12 January 2010.

 

LATEST NEWS FROM TV2 News, Danish and British TEXT-TV as well as German text-TV (ARDtext and ZDFtext):

NEW STRONG AFTERSHOCK rattles / rocked Haiti.

 

ZDFtext + ARDtext:

The epicentre of the new quake taking place at 6.03 (local time?) was 60 km West-Southwest of Port-au-prince in a depth of less than 10 km! (ARDtext cites USGS for a dept of 22 km). People panicked / ran - screaming - out of the buildings and into the streets. Fear of new dead and wounded Haitians.

 

ARDtext:

According to the Haitian government: The 7.0 quake on 12 January 2010 probably killed 200,000 and wounded 250,000, while 1.5 mio Haitians were made homeless.

 

TV2 News (seen around 15.20 Danish time):

TV2 reporter Allan Silberbrandt was in the area and said that the new magnitude 6.1 quake / strong aftershock felt like a gigantic hand shaking the house he was in."

 

The official death toll in Haiti is 75,000. 47 UN employees are killed and 500 missing.

 

ZDFtext:

Around 17,860 Euro collected for victims of Haitian earthquake in a direct ZDF broadcast on 19 January 2010. ZDF and "Bild hilft e.V" organized the collection for the earthquake victims in Haiti. Slogan: "Wir wollen helfen - ein Herz für Kinder" = We want to help - one heart for children.

 

ARDtext:

More aid from Germany so that Germany is donating 10 million EURO in total. Germany already pledged 7.5 million and is now donating 2, 5 million to the World Food Program, WFP. And the Pariser Club considers / agrees on total debt relief.

 

Mr. Ladekarl, Secretary General of Red Cross, Denmark has returned to Denmark after reaching Haiti last Saturday (via the Dominican Republic). He talked of "increasing despair in Haiti. The wounded are suffering, because the unattended wounds are festering and gangrene set in. Haitians are fleeing out of the capital / Port-au-Prince".

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[22-Jan-10] COLDPLAY to perform in "HOPE for HAITI" BENEFIT CONCERT on all Major Networks

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

"Justin Timberlake, COLDPLAY, ALICIA KEYS, BRUCE Springsteen, Wyclef Jean, BONO, The EDGE and JAY-Z will lead the all-star lineup of performers for Friday night's "Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief" telethon. More than 100 stars have signed on to help raise funds for the MTV Networks-sponsored show, which will benefit the victims of last week's devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake on the impoverished island.

 

Several one-of-a-kind collaborations will highlight the event, including a hookup between U2's Bono and The Edge with Jay-Z and Rihanna in London and a jam featuring Kid Rock, Keith Urban and Sheryl Crow in Los Angeles; like all the night's performances, the collabos will be available for download on iTunes for 99 cents the next day.

 

Also appearing in New York with Wyclef and Springsteen will be Jennifer Hudson, Mary J. Blige, Shakira and Sting, while the Los Angeles show will feature performances from Keys, Christina Aguilera, Dave Matthews, John Legend, Timberlake, Stevie Wonder and Taylor Swift.

 

Jean, a native of Haiti, George Clooney and CNN's Anderson Cooper will appear on the show, which will be broadcast from New York, London, Los Angeles and Haiti and feature more than 100 of the biggest names in film, television and music with testimonials and answering phones. The two-hour program will air commercial-free across ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, BET, the CW, HBO, MTV, VH1 and CMT on Friday at 8 p.m. ET/PT. The special will also air on PBS, TNT, Showtime, Comedy Central, Bravo, E! Entertainment Network, National Geographic Channel, Oxygen, G4, Centric, Current TV, Fuse, MLB Network, Epix, Palladia, SoapNet, Style, Discovery Health and Planet Green, as well as Canada's CTV, CBC Television, Global Television and MuchMusic. It will also air internationally on BET International, CNN International, National Geographic and MTV Networks International, available in 640 million homes worldwide. "Hope for Haiti" will be the first U.S.-based telethon airing on MTV in China. Facebook and Twitter are the official social media partners who will help to drive donations and tune-in to the telethon.

 

All donations will directly benefit OXFAM AMERICA, Partners in Health, RED CROSS, UNICEF and Wyclef's YELE HAITI Foundation./COLOR] Facebook and MySpace have signed on as official social-media partners to help steer viewers to the telethon and drive donations.

 

Additionally, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund and United Nations World Food Programme have joined the list of relief organizations that will benefit from the show, with proceeds to be split evenly among each organization's individual Haiti relief funds. "Hope For Haiti Now" will be the most widely distributed telethon in history, internationally and across media platforms, including live streaming globally on sites including YouTube, Hulu, MySpace, Fancast, AOL, MSN.com, Yahoo, Bing.com, BET.com, MTV.com, and Rhapsody and on mobile via Alltel, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and FloTV.

 

On the red carpet at Sunday night's Golden Globe Awards, George Clooney revealed how the global fundraiser came together. "You guys started it," the actor said. "The first call I made was to Judy [McGrath, MTV Networks' chief executive]. She said, 'Yes, everybody will do it, everybody's in' and that they were thinking of doing it too. They got the ball rolling and we got every single network after that. So congratulations to you!"

 

Before the telethon airs, Clooney wanted to remind young people that there are MTV's "Hope for Haiti" telethon, airing commercial-free Friday, January 22, at 8 p.m. ET. "

 

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/163...19/jay_z.jhtml

-----------------------------

 

ARDtext:

SEVERAL CASUALTIES / VICTIMS OF MAGNITUDE-6.1 AFTERSHOCK: 20 hawkers / street vendors buried.

 

BBC WORLD / NEWS on 21.1.10 at 2 am (European time):

UN sending 3,500 extra peacekeepers to Haiti.

 

MSF = Médecins Sans Frontières:

Doctors forced to amputate due to infection (wounds festering and gangrene). The doctors needed several saws, but only had 1!

 

Medical supplies running out fast!

The USA control Haiti airport, and several MSF planes loaded with emergency relief have been re-routed to the Dominican Republic, and the emergency relief is then transported by truck to Haiti!

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UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 21 JANUARY 2010

 

ZDF text + ARD text:

A 5-year-old boy rescued out of the rubble of a house, according to The US relief organization "International Medical Corps".

 

ARD text:

The boy was dehydrated, otherwise unhurt. His relatives would recover a dead person's body out of the rubble of his parents' house. Suddenly the rescuers could hear someone shout: "I am here, I am here" and managed to get him out.

Earlier today an 11-year-old girls had been pulled out of the rubble of a house.

 

ZDF text and BBC World :

The USA will send additional 4,000 soldiers (sailors and marines) to Haiti.

 

DR1: Guantanamo is prepared to receive boat refugees from Haiti. 100 tents, each with capacity/room for 10 persons, established. 1,000 additional tents in stock. Camp beds assembled. The expected Haitian boat refugees will be accommodated at a distance of 4 km of the prisoners. Source: Associated Press.

 

SVT text + Danish DR1:

Haiti's vital / most important harbour will be opened again on Friday 22 January. The plan is then to deliver goods via the harbour and bring people to Haiti via the airport.

 

DR1:

Haitians are streaming to the harbour which is fully operative within 3 weeks. Thousands of Haitians are gathered in the harbour in the hope of getting away. Boat owners have been given free fuel by the government to transport Haitians from Port-au-Prince to the Western part of the island. Boats with capacity/room for 600 people have 3,000 Haitians on board. There is no control.

 

Danes have donated 32 mio DKK to Haiti in only 8 days.

 

Aircrafts with medical supplies from MSF / Médecins Sans Frontières have been denied access to the airport in Port-au-Prince 3 - three - times! Since 14 January 5 MSF aircrafts with a total of 85 tons emergency relief/goods have been denied access to the airport and had to land in the Dominican Republic. Loris de Filippi, Relief coordinator from MSF at the Choscal hospital in Port-au-Prince: "5 patients are dead in our clinic in Martissant due to lack of medical supplies that were on

board that aircraft!!"

 

 

SVT text: Now other parts of Haiti than Port-au-Prince benefit from the relief efforts. Helicopters from the USA and Canada brought supplies to the sea port Jacmel. Its 60,000 inhabitants are totally dependent on aid from abroad.

 

 

Danish TV2 TTV:

106 orphans are being flown to the Netherlands this afternoon. The adoptions of these orphans had been approved before the devastating earthquake in Haiti struck. 92 of the orphans will be handed over to Dutch adoptive parents, whereas 14 orphans have been adopted by adoptive parents in Luxembourgh.

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1 MILLION RAISED FOR HAITI‏

 

From: Luis Morago - Avaaz.org ([email protected])

Sent: 21 January 2010 19:37:18

To: Nancy Boysen

 

Avaaz members have surged to the help of Haiti raising over $1 MILLION in just a few days! Every dollar/euro/yen donated is immediately being sent to empower trustworthy local partner organizations to scale up their efforts, but the devastation is staggering and the needs remain massive. See the email below -- let´s stand with the Haitian people, help now!

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_haiti

 

Haiti's worst earthquake in 200 years struck last week, devastating the capital city, killing tens of thousands and threatening over 3 million people in this desperately poor country.

 

Haitians are urgently appealing to the world for help -- we’re already working with strong local organisations mobilising community-based relief efforts. Let’s send a worldwide wave of donations to the front lines, to save lives now and help people recover and rebuild. Avaaz will work partners to make sure the help reaches those who need it most. Click below to donate:

 

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_haiti

 

Based on expert advice from leading humanitarian NGOs who have been working in Haiti for over 20 years, we're offering donations to trusted local organizations, including:

 

Honor and Respect for Bel Air, a big community-based network in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, which is also supported by our friends at the respected Brazilian NGO Viva Rio

 

Coordination Régionale des Organisations de Sud-Est (CROSE), which brings together some of the most active community groups in the South of Haiti where the earthquake struck hardest. These groups include: women's groups, schools networks and local cooperatives

 

Zanmi Lasante, sister organization of Partners in Health (PiH) in Haiti. PiH and its partners have been among the first to respond with emergency medical services to the most vulnerable

 

In 2008, Avaaz members donated over $2 million for Burmese monks to respond to the devastating Cyclone Nargis. Our money made an incredible difference there -- because it went directly to local people on the front lines of the aid effort.

 

Times of painful tragedy can bring out the best in us by bringing people together. Let's join with the people of Haiti to help them rescue their communities from this brutal disaster -- act now at this link:

 

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_haiti

 

With hope for Haiti,

 

Luis, Paul, Graziela, Paula, Ricken, Pascal, Alice, Benjamin, Milena and the whole Avaaz team

 

More information:

 

Haiti devastated by massive earthquake (BBC):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8455629.stm

 

Haiti hit by second strong earthquake (The Guardian): http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/20/haiti-hit-by-second-earthquake

 

Tiny steps toward basic services (New York Times):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/world/americas/20services.html?pagewanted=2&ref=world

 

Deadly earthquake hits Haiti (Reuters pictures):

http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=USRTR28T0W#a=7

 

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Haiti Has Become Ground Zero For Brazil To Flex Its Muscle Against The US

 

Brazil military leaders have preemptively refused to relinquish command of the UN mission in Haiti, in face of a planned influx of more than 10,000 U.S. troops.

 

The country that commands the mission will control a large and ongoing international military effort, according to Al-Jazeera columnist Gabriel Elizondo.

 

Whether or not America wants or can afford another military commitment, taking command in Haiti signifies continued leadership in the western hemisphere. That claim was central to America's rise to global hegemony, as expressed in the Monroe Doctrine.

 

If Brazil maintains command, the rising power can claim military leadership of all Latin America. France, which is also a traditional power in Haiti, has not contested mission command.

 

Already the turf war has played out in tension over plane landing rights.

 

Al-Jazeera:

 

Three Brazilian planes loaded with supplies were held up and not allowed to land in Haiti by the FAA (America’s agency that handles air traffic, which is now in control of airspace in Haiti). Celso Amorim, Brazil’s foreign minister, apparently was so upset about it that he put in a call to Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and asked that Brazilian aeroplanes be given priority over chartered flights.

 

I imagine Brazilian commanders were thinking to themselves: "How dare the US hold up our planes - we run the UN forces in Haiti!"

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/haiti...truggle-2010-1

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UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 21 AND 22 jANUARY 2010

 

DR.DK/News (Danish Text TV):

The skyrocketing of prices: Massive price increases on water, food and fuel. Some shops, however, keep the prices at pre-quake level.

 

The European Union (EU) sends Danish engineer to Haiti where he is to be ECHO's ears and eyes. He is sure that Haiti needs water purification equipment.

 

The UN: "We do not control Haiti". In an interview with the French paper LE MONDE, United Nation's Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Edmond Mulet admits that the cooperation between the USA and the UN has not been unproblematic. "The disaster has made us powerless. We do not control Haiti". Little by little the UN has succeeded in establishing a respectful and constructive cooperation with the Americans, but their authority / mandate was unclear in the beginning.

 

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director / head of the International Monetary Fund recommends a multilateral aid programme for Haiti like the Marshall Plan that contributed to rebuilding Europe after World War II. On Monday 25 January 2010 Canada hosts a donors conference where rebuilding and reconstruction efforts will be discussed and where a donor meeting to be held in March will be prepared.

 

The vital port (harbour) in Port-au-Prince has been reopened. The devastating earthquake in Haiti destroyed the harbour and made it unfit for use. Construction workers have repaired the harbour so that it is possible to unload relief supplies from ships. 3 ships have now called at the port and unloaded necessaries. Several ships are bound for the port according to American sources.

 

BBC WORLD / news:

Haiti is planning to house 400,000 earth quake survivors in new tented villages outside the capital, Port-au-Prince. 100,000 people would initially be sent to 10 settlements near the suburb of Croix Des Bouquets.

An estimated 1.5 mio people left homeless by the 7.0-magnitude quake which killed as many as 200,000 people.

 

SVT Text:

Citizens of more than 30 countries were among the ten, maybe hundred thousands of victims of last week's devastating earthquake in Haiti. 150 foreigners were confirmed dead of which 33 American citizens. Several hundred foreigners are still missing of which Canada has 543 missing, Belgium 87, Mexico 47, Italy 20 and France 11 missing citizens.

 

ZDF Text:

The gala broadcast on the German TV channel ZDF in favour of HAITI resulted in record-high donations of more than 20,5 mio EURO. Several organizations benefitted from the gala donations including the organizations "Ein Herz für Kinder" (A heart for children), German Red Cross and Caritas International. Last tuesday ZDF's and Bild's joint action resulted in almost 18 mio. EURO. Germans donated 20,552,864 EURO via Hotline until Thursday.

 

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said that the initial difficulties had now been overcome and that the system is now efficient. 5 transport routes have been established and the airport's capacity has increased. Now supplies are also coming to Haiti by sea. The International Red Cross / ICRC confirmed the arrival of aid.

 

10,000 earthquake victims per day are put into mass graves. 80,000 dead have been buried so far.

 

ARD text:

Rescue teams from the USA, Belgium, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom have stopped looking for survivors and are leaving Haiti 9 days after the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010. Yesterday two children were rescued. More than 120 survivors have been rescued. 4 Germans are missing.

 

The United Nations planning work for Haitians. The United Nations will pay up to 220,000 Haitians for cleaning work. Initially 700 people will be paid for necessary cleaning work in the framework of the "cash for work" programme. "Later 220,000 people will find a job," says Helen Clark, United Nation's Development Programme Head. This is indirectly helping one million people. 35.6 mio Dollars needed for this programme.

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According to the Anchorman and MTV.com/news the concert will be aired:

 

8 p.m. ET (Eastern time in the USA + Canada) / PT (Pacific Time) = 2 am CET (Central European Time)

 

7 p.m. CT (Central Time in the USA + CANADA) = 1 am in the UK

 

 

I looked in today's TV programmes and found that National Geographic International will broadcast "HOPE for HAITI" (that must be the concert) from 2 to 3. BUT ONLY ONE HOUR - I read that more than 100 artists will participate.

 

Some TV stations/channels may choose to broadcast it later.

 

 

THE SHOW WILL BE REPEATED ON SATURDAY on MTV and VIVA at 9:00 UK TIME AND 10:00 CET.

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UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 22 JANUARY 2010

 

Denmark dispatches another emergency camp to Haiti

 

Friday 22. Jan. 2010 at 20:35 by jely / ritzau for TV2 News (updated 22/1 2010 at 20:35)

 

Distribution of aid/relief and coordination is still a major challenge in Haiti. Therefore the Danish authority "the Emergency Management Agency" is to dispatch another socalled base camp - on United Nation's request.

As is the case with the camp that was sent last week, the additional camp with space for 100 is to function as a mobile camp for United Nation's aid & relief workers in Port-au-Prince. According to plan the equipment for the new camp was to be sent on Thursday by first available airplane. The Emergency Management Agency is part of a joint Nordic effort.

"The UN has a crucial and central role when it comes to ensuring the best possible coordination of the emergency relief efforts. I am pleased that Denmark can help," says the Danish Development Minister Ulla Toernaes (V) in a press release.

 

BBC WORLD:

Haiti rescuers wind down search for survivors in the debris of Haiti's earthquake. UK HAITI rescuers returning home. Spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs said some search and rescue teams were leaving as hopes of finding more people alive under the rubble begin to fade. Rescuers with heavy equipment continue to dig out dead bodies. British rescuers return to the UK early Saturday.

 

Since the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010 Life is slowly returning to normal, with shops opening and buses running.

 

Christian Fraser, BBC News, Jacmel:

Jacmel, a former colonial coffee town, is desperate for help. Perhaps one in three buildings in the old town now lies in ruins - more than 100 years of history, shattered in a few catastrophic seconds.

At the Saint Michele hospital the patients are lying in the garden, baking in the heat, without enough doctors to help. The hospital buildings are too unstable to use. In the operating theatre, nurses swat flies as the surgeons do what they can. Outside, the injured scream for painkillers.

 

122 have been dug out alive - but the hope of finding more survivors in the rubble / debris fade.

 

Quake focus changes focus from the rescue of survivors in the debris/rubble to relief work, the United Nations says.

 

AN 84-YEAR-OLD WOMAN has been RESCUED after spending 10 days under rubble following the Haiti quake. Doctors say the woman has multiple wounds and her condition is grave, but are doing all they can to save her.

The rescue came as the UN said rescuers were winding down searches for survivors and focusing on relief work. Spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs said some rescue teams were leaving, as there was little hope of finding more people alive under the rubble.

A benefit concert, featuring more than 100 music and Hollywood stars, is to be broadcast around the world from 2000 EST (0100 GMT) for victims of the earthquake.

 

SECURITY FEARS

In Port-au-Prince, life is slowly returning to normal, with shops opening and buses running - although many residents are continuing to leave the devastated capital.

On Thursday the government announced plans to send 400,000 people to tented cities in the countryside, to try to halt the spread of disease in the makeshift settlements that have sprung up in the capital.

Construction for the temporary centres has already started, the Associated Press says, but it is unclear when they will be populated.

Aid officials say about 200,000 people have already left the city, many to stay with relatives in other parts of the country.

Aid officials say about 200,000 people have already left the city, many to stay with relatives in other parts of the country.

The 84-year-old woman, rescued on Friday after 10 days in the rubble, is being treated by doctors at the main city hospital with intravenous fluids and drugs.

"I'm trying to find out how I can help her survive," Dr Ernest Benjamin told AFP news agency. "It's worth everything to try to save her."

Her son told the agency he had heard her cries on Thursday morning and, almost a day later, he dug her out with the help of friends.

Some 122 people have been saved by international search and rescue teams, according to the US government.

At least 75,000 bodies have so far been buried in mass graves, Haiti's government has said. Many more remain uncollected in the streets.

An estimated 1.5 million people were left homeless by the 7.0-magnitude quake, which some have estimated has killed as many as 200,000 people.

 

Robbing and looting

Security fears remain in the capital, with local police chief Insp Aristide Rosemont appealing for help to tackle criminals who escaped when the earthquake wrecked the main jail.

He told the BBC a large number of gangs had begun robbing and looting in the Cite Soleil slum area since the prison escape.

But despite problems in Cite Soleil, UN officials say the capital is largely calm, with only sporadic violence.

About 5,000 prisoners broke out of the capital's main jail after the walls collapsed, some of them hardened offenders belonging to violent criminal gangs.

 

Mass graves

Ms Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told AFP news agency that some search and rescue teams were "exhausted" and starting to leave.

Those that remain "are concentrating more and more on humanitarian aid for those who need it", she said.

Some have tried to flee abroad, but US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned Haitians not to use the earthquake as an excuse to try to enter the US illegally. She said anyone caught trying to do so would be repatriated.

"Haitians need to be there to help rebuild their country, this is not an opportunity for migration," she said.

Meanwhile, efforts to rebuild Haiti's main seaport - seen as vital to the international aid effort - are being stepped up.

 

The US and the UN World Food Programme insist the distribution of food and water is well under way, but BBC correspondents in Port-au-Prince say many people have still seen no international aid at all.

 

At least 500,000 people are currently living outdoors in 447 improvised camps in Port-au-Prince, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), with limited shelter and access to water.

Western countries are hoping to boost donations for the aid effort with a multi-network telethon.

 

Hope for Haiti Now, to be broadcast from New York, London, Los Angeles and Haiti, will feature Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce and other major artists. The concert will be shown on all major US TV channels, MTV in the UK and worldwide on YouTube from 0100 GMT.

 

STARS line up for HAITI BENEFIT CONCERT

 

A benefit concert for the victims of the Haiti earthquake, hosted by George Clooney and featuring JAY-Z and MADONNA is set to take place later.

Other acts taking part in the two-hour Hope for Haiti telethon include Bono, The Edge and Rihanna, who pre-recorded their performances in London on Friday. The concert will be shown on all major US TV channels, MTV in the UK and worldwide on YouTube from 0100 GMT.

 

An estimated 1.5 million people have been left homeless by the earthquake.

As many as 200,000 people have been killed by the 7.0-magnitude quake, according to some estimates.

 

CHARITY SINGLE

The benefit concert will take place in New York, Los Angeles, London and Haiti.

More than 100 Hollywood and music stars are understood to have agreed to take part.

Haitian-born rapper Wyclef Jean - who set up the charity foundation Yele Haiti - Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Hudson, Mary J Blige, Shakira and Sting will perform in New York.

Rihanna, meanwhile, will perform a cover version of Bob Marley's Redemption Song, which she has released to raise money for the people of Haiti.

Film stars making appearances will include Brad Pitt, Ben Stiller, Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Julia Roberts, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Tom Hanks and Will Smith.

 

George Clooney, who organised the event, told MTV: "It's a big world out there, and we all have a lot of responsibility to look out for people who can't look out for themselves."

"So what we can do is first and foremost, raise money. Period. That's it ...

"If I thought we could all pick up shovels and go in there and help without being in the way, I think a lot of people would do that."

 

The live programme can be seen online via YouTube, MySpace, Hulu, Fancast, AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, Bing.com, BET.com, MTV.com, CNN.com, VH1.com and Rhapsody.

 

The show will also be repeated in the UK at 0900 GMT on Saturday morning, on both MTV and its sister channel VIVA.

 

Meanwhile, Rod Stewart, Leona Lewis, JLS and Michael Buble have signed up to provide vocals for a Haiti charity single, organised by Simon Cowell. They will record a cover of REM's ballad Everybody Hurts.

 

BBC WORLD / News 22 January 2010

 

Life is slowly returning to normal, with shops opening and buses running.

 

 

MISGUIDED FEARS TEST HAITIANS' PATIENCE

By Matthew Price, BBC News

 

Let me take you on a drive through the streets of Port-au-Prince.

 

I am afraid I cannot tell you the street names, but they are pretty meaningless now anyway, and the tour you are about to embark on could be anywhere in the city, to tell you the truth.

Look up there, hanging above the road - a tatty, old piece of wood, white, with blue writing on it asking for help. The arrow points into a courtyard, in which you can see several vehicles, and some people lying under the shade of some trees.

Now here, a few hundred metres along the road, another sign with no punctuation: "Please help UN US Need Food Water Medicine".

In another street, a group of people, men and women, with scarves tied over their mouths to protect them from the dust and the smell tell us to stop.

We will have to go round another way, one says, this road is too dangerous.

There are pieces of rubble across the street - a makeshift road block. The men and women are local people, looking after their own neighbourhood.

Further along there is a group of men putting up a banner, across the entrance to a side street.

"Camp des Refuges de St Patrick," it reads. There is even an e-mail address underneath, though how they expect to receive any e-mails I do not know.

Under the banner and along the road there is a group of men who want to know why we are there. One of them takes us further, as the others continue to work out how best to help their street, their people.

At the end, bathed in the orange glow of the setting sun, sit mothers and children.

Out in the street, ropes strung across the lane between the shattered buildings hold up sheets. They form makeshift shelters under which they will spend the night.

All this has been set up by the people themselves.

 

'Affront to humanity'

During the last week in Haiti, I was left with one overwhelming impression - it is the survivors who are helping themselves. They are pulling together, not tearing themselves apart.

Much has been made of the potential for violence, but I did not feel unsafe. Not once did I think the crowds might turn on me.

When I gave some food and water to a family we had been filming, others who had nothing stood silently by, glad that at least someone was getting a little help.

Some of the aid agencies say they fear riots may start if they start to distribute supplies in the hundreds of makeshift camps where people have gathered.

I fear riots in the long-term if they do not start distributing supplies right now.

There has been some sporadic violence. That should be expected. It would happen anywhere. Look at what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

 

But to use the threat of violence as a reason for not distributing aid is an affront to the people of Haiti and their own humanity.

 

'Calm and peaceful'

Given the scale of the disaster, should we not be focusing on how little violence there is, rather than the rare moments when frustration spills over into fighting?

We should certainly be concerned about overstating the security fears and undermining the aid effort, thereby exacerbating people's frustration and increasing the likelihood of violence.

Earlier this week former US President Bill Clinton, the UN special envoy to Haiti, told the BBC: "When you consider that these people haven't slept for four days, haven't eaten, and have spent their nights wandering the streets tripping over dead bodies, I think they've behaved pretty well."

The US ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, meanwhile told PBS that "people should be aware that the vast majority of Haitians here are behaving in a calm and peaceful manner". There are now thousands of US soldiers on the ground in Haiti.

 

In places they act as if they are in the middle of Iraq or Afghanistan, pushing back people, sealing off secure zones. One told a comrade that he feared another Somalia here. But that is the wrong approach. This is a humanitarian disaster, not a war.

The soldiers and others are being welcomed - they are needed. For how much longer, though, will the people welcome them, if the aid continues to sit on the ground at the airport, rather than being put into the mouths of those who need it?

 

Haiti earthquake: 400,000 to be resettled outside Port-au-Prince

 

Within days, the Haitian government will move 400,000 people made homeless by the epic earthquake from their squalid improvised camps throughout the shattered capital to new resettlement areas on the outskirts, a top official has said.

 

Published: 7:00AM GMT 22 Jan 2010

 

Authorities are worried about sanitation and disease outbreaks in makeshift settlements like the one on the city's central Champs de Mars plaza, said Fritz Longchamp, chief of staff to President Rene Preval.

"The Champ de Mars is no place for 1,000 or 10,000 people," he said. "They are going to be going to places where they will have at least some adequate facilities."

He said buses would start moving the displaced people within a week to 10 days, once the new camps are ready.

Brazilian UN peacekeepers were already levelling land in the suburb of Croix des Bouquets for a new tent city, the Geneva-based intergovernmental International Organization for Migration said.

The hundreds of thousands whose homes were destroyed in the Jan. 12 quake had settled in more than 200 open spaces around the city, the lucky ones securing tents for their families, but most having to make do living under the tropical sun on blankets, on plastic sheets or under tarpaulins strung between tree limbs.

The announcement came as search-and-rescue teams packed their dogs and gear, with hopes almost gone of finding any more alive in the ruins. The focus shifted to keeping injured survivors alive, fending off epidemics and getting help to the hundreds of homeless still suffering.

"We're so, so hungry," said Felicie Colin, 77, lying outside the ruins of her Port-au-Prince nursing home with dozens of other elderly residents who have hardly eaten since the earthquake hit on Jan. 12.

A melee erupted at one charity's food distribution point as people broke into the storehouse, ran off with food and fought each other over the bags.

 

As aftershocks still shook the city, aid workers were streaming into Haiti with water, food, drugs, latrines, clothing, trucks, construction equipment, telephones and tons of other relief supplies. The international Red Cross called it the greatest deployment of emergency responders in its 91-year history.

 

But the built-in bottlenecks of this desperately poor, underdeveloped nation and the sheer scale of the catastrophe still left many of the hundreds of thousands of victims without help. The US military reported a waiting list of 1,400 international relief flights seeking to land on Port-au-Prince's single runway, where 120 to 140 flights were arriving daily.

"They don't see any food and water coming to them, and they are frustrated," said Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.

The picture was especially grim at emergency medical centers, where shortages of surgeons, nurses, their tools and supplies have backed up critical cases.

"A large number of those coming here are having to have amputations, since their wounds are so infected," said Brynjulf Ystgaard, a Norwegian surgeon at a Red Cross field hospital.

On Thursday, 18 hospitals and emergency field hospitals were working in Port-au-Prince. But the burden was overwhelming: Some quake victims have waited for a week for treatment, and patients were dying of sepsis from untreated wounds, according to Dr. Greg Elder, deputy operations manager for Doctors Without Borders.

 

The Pan American Health Organization said hospitals need more orthopedic surgeons and nurses, more supplies, and better sanitation and water.

The Haitian government asked that mobile clinics be set up in all of the more than 280 sites where Port-au-Prince's now-homeless have resettled in tents or in the open air on blankets and plastic sheets.

Doctors warned, too, of potential outbreaks of diarrhea, respiratory-tract infections and other communicable diseases among hundreds of thousands living in overcrowded camps with poor sanitation. A team of epidemiologists was on its way to assess that situation, the Pan American Health Organization said.

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UPDATES OF THE SITUATION on HAITI on 22 JANUARY 2010, PART II of II

 

ZDF text on 22 January 2010: Janet Napolitano, US Secretary for Homeland Security said that Haitians who came to the USA illegally would be returned to their devastated island because they are needed there to help rebuild Haiti.

 

Shakira will build a school in Haiti. The 32-year-old singer will finance the construction of a school in Haiti. US billionaire Howard Buffet will also be involved in this.

 

The UN will pay Haitians for rebuilding the country, and the US has supported this idea. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has been talking to Bill Clinton, the UN special envoy to Haiti. 200,000 Haitians are to contribute to remove rubble / debris for a day pay of 5 Dollars corresponding to 3.50 EURO. This will also boost the economy in the region. This programme disposes of 5 million Dollars. The UN applies for 41 million Dollars.

 

ARDtext: Haiti Charity Single Project involving Rod Stewart, Leona Lewis and Michael Bublé. According to the Sun, the single will be a coverversion of the REM ballad "Everybody Hurts" from 1993. Also asked to participate were Robbie Williams, COLDPLAY, Take That and Paul McCartney. In the USA musicians around Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie plan a new recording of "We are the World" from 1985 in favour of HAITI's earthquake victims. Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson were the team behind this song.

 

TV2 TTV: Haiti shaken by new intensive aftershocks. Today Haitians experienced two heavy aftershocks which made some Haitians run out of buildings and into the streets, whereas other Haitians had somehow got used to it.

 

Only one mole of the harbour / port in Port-au-Prince can be used to unload relief goods / aid. Containers with aid arrived in Haiti. On Friday the harbour/port is expectd to receive 250 containers with aid and relief goods. Working on repairing the port so that more ships can unload emergency relief goods / aid. It is the objective to increase the number of containers (with relief / aid to be loaded and unloaded in the port) to 800 per day.

 

According to the United Nations 3 million meals have been distributed to 200,000 Haitians, and it is hoped to reach the figure of 10 million meals next week. The UN is trying to find locations for makeshift / interim camps for the many Haitians made homeless by the devastating earthquake.

 

TV2 News on 22 January at 22.30 pm:

TV2's reporter, Mr Allan Silberbrandt let us know that 2 million Haitians need water and food, and the water quality varies. He had visited a village situated 40 km from Port-au-Prince and was told that the inhabitants had so far received NO aid. Then there was an interview with Mr Henrik Kastoft, Communications Advisor for UN's Development Programme: Some Haitian roads were in a very bad conditions, but some of them have now been reopened which makes it easier to transport aid / reliefs goods from the Dominican Republic and into the Haiti disaster area. He understood the critical remarks about the United Nation's efforts last week, but this week the criticism was not fair. He was confronted with the fact that TV2's reporter Allan Silberbrandt had visited a village and while being there he saw no distribution of food or water, but many white UN cars with UN employees with briefcases, whereas distribution of water and food seemed more needed! His reaction was that Mr Silberbrandt had apparently not known where the distribution point was.

 

 

The "HOPE For HAITI NOW" Concert will be REPEATED on SATURDAY on MTV and VIVA at 9:00 UK TIME AND 10:00 CET.

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UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON Saturday, 23 JANUARY 2010 and other Haiti-relevant news items / updates

 

News from ZDF around noon today:

A few cuts / clips from the Hope for Haiti Now concert with Madonna singing: Like a Prayer and the moving appeal from Haiti-born Wyclef Jean.

 

BBC World / News talked about tonight's / yesterday evening's telethon and in the background on the screen Coldplay was playing "The Message" (it was only a short glimpse).

 

ZDF text:

31 German rescuers are returning home. They characterized the atmosphere / common feeling among the Haitians as being as if it were "the-end-of- the-world" (a kind of "the latter-days" feeling).

 

UNICEF warned against adoptions - "it is better to help the children in their own environment".

 

NEW:

Comment to the news item that UNICEF warned against foreign adoptions: In Telethon there was a mini-interview with a leader of an orphanage in Haiti. He said that there were so many new orphans that it would be nice if many of the surviving orphans went to foreign countries via adoptions so that there would be room for more children in the orphanages, because he had had to say no to 80 orphans - and that was BEFORE THE DEVASTATING EARTHQUAKE ON 12 JANUARY 2010 THAT KILLED MAYBE 200,000 PEOPLE SO THAT EVEN MORE CHILDREN BECAME ORPHANS!

 

A Haiti crisis conference will be held on Monday, 25 February 2010 in Montreal, Canada.

 

UN figures: 111,499 found dead, 193,000 wounded. More than 609,000 living in about 500 field camps after the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010 destroyed their homes.

 

84-year-old woman rescued out of rubble Friday - she has chest injuries.

 

22-year-old man rescued Friday - 10 days after the earthquake struck - he is in a stable condition.

 

ALL news media:

The United Nations has officially declared the search and rescue phase over. This was announced one day after 2 people were pulled ALIVE from the rubble in Port-au-Prince. But OCHA will focus on helping the survivors. UN spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs says that 132 people have been rescued since the earthquake 11 days ago - 2 of them yesterday!

 

On Friday the official government death toll from the quake rose to 110,000.

 

An estimated 1.5 million people have been left homeless by the earthquake.

 

Danish TV2 news:

The UN World Food Programme announced that yesterday it distributed 2 million meals compared with 1.2 million meals (last) Thursday. Again a reporter from Danish TV2 news has talked to Haitians who have seen lots of trucks drive by without stopping to let them have some water and food. So these Haitians claim that they had received NO AID at all.

 

I came to think about a news items on Text TV three days ago (and only seen ONCE): A Haitian minister (I think it was the Haitian Communications Minister) said that if you asked the Haitians if hey received aid, they would say know - "they are lying!" I did not bring that news item then, because the remark seemed so ridiculous. But I think that I would mention it now . but I only read this remark ONCE! - I think that more and more Haitians are getting aid now.

 

Stars came out for Haiti: Ceorge Clooney hosted a benefit concert for the Haiti earthquake victims featuring A-list names such as Madonna, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and Jay-Z. Other acts who appeared in the 2-hour-long Hope for Haiti telethon included Bono and Rihanna who pre-recorded their performances in London on Friday.

-----------------------------------------------------------

 

TELETHON - HOSTED BY GEORGE CLOONEY - ON 23 JANUARY 2010 INCLUDING PERFORMANCES BY COLDPLAY, BONO, BRUCE Springsteen + Madonna

 

COLDPLAY performed "a MESSAGE" at tonight's telethon (televised on all major TV channels in the USA and National Geographic international, CNN international and MTV international). I saw it on Danish television (TV2 from 2-4am). It was really good. And Chris accompanied Beyoncé on piano as she sung "Halo". Very good indeed. All the major stars within movies and music were there. Performing: Beyonce singing Halo accompanied by Chris on the piano, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Coldplay, Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, Christina Aguilera, an interesting collaboration of BONO & The EDGE, Jay-Z and Rihanna - the melody was not so catchy.

 

Haitian-born Wyclef Jean held a very emotional speech.

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APPEAL FROM OXFAM: HELP HAITI TODAY AND TOMORROW

 

CANCEL THE DEBT

 

Our biggest concern right now is dealing with the immediate aftermath of the humanitarian disaster caused by the devastating earthquake. But in our concern to help those suffering, let’s not forget the long term.

 

The world’s attention is focused on Haiti. Leaders are pledging to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people and help them to build a brighter future out of the rubble. The debts that Haiti owes will hamper efforts to rebuild the country and lock them in poverty for years to come.

 

Leaders are meeting in Montreal on Monday to decide on the amount of aid that they will give. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that it will work to cancel the debt, and this now needs to happen.

 

Email the head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn to demand that when leaders meet on Monday, they cancel Haiti’s debts immediately.

 

WHY IS DEBT CANCELLATION SO IMPORTANT?

Haiti still owes hundreds of millions of dollars in debt - a legacy of loans from global financial institutions and donor nations to unelected governments of years past. It is one of the poorest countries in the world and yet the IMF response to the earthquake was to offer a $100 million loan. This loan would increase Haiti’s debt burden at this time of crisis.

 

EMAIL THE HEAD OF THE IMF

Haiti currently owes over $891 million in debt. If these debts aren't cancelled, Haiti will be sending tens of millions to the IMF and other international bodies even as it struggles to rescue and rebuild.

 

Email the head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn to demand that the IMF cancels Haiti’s debt immediately to make sure that earthquake relief doesn't create a new debt burden.

 

Our biggest concern right now is dealing with the immediate aftermath of the humanitarian disaster caused by the devastating earthquake. But in our concern to help those suffering, let’s not forget the long term.

 

The world’s attention is focused on Haiti. Leaders are pledging to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people and help them to build a brighter future out of the rubble. The debts that Haiti owes will hamper efforts to rebuild the country and lock them in poverty for years to come.

 

Leaders are meeting in Montreal on Monday to decide on the amount of aid that they will give. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that it will work to cancel the debt, and this now needs to happen.

 

 

EMAIL the head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn to demand that when leaders meet on Monday, they cancel Haiti’s debts immediately.

 

 

After having sent this email:

 

"To: [email protected]

 

Subject: Cancel Haiti’s debt

 

Dear Dominique Strauss-Kahn

 

In the wake of the earthquake, we call on you to work to cancel Haiti's $890 million debt and ensure that earthquake aid comes as grants, not loans. Haiti's scarce funds must be used to help its people rebuild their lives.

 

The international community and the IMF must take action to cancel Haiti’s debt immediately, as you have indicated. You have said that you are working on a way to turn the $100 million loan already announced into a grant and I very strongly urge you to do everything you can to make sure that this happens.

 

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

 

Nancy Boysen "

 

I received this from OXFAM:

 

Thank you,

Thanks for taking action. Although our biggest concern right now is dealing with the immediate aftermath of the terrible humanitarian disaster caused by the devastating earthquake, we need to still think about the future of Haiti.

It’s vital that while the world’s attention is focused on Haiti we show our support to help the people of Haiti build a brighter future.

 

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/campaign/actions/haiti_drop_the_debt.html

 

 

EMAIL the head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn to demand that when leaders meet on Monday, they cancel Haiti’s debts immediately.

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Updates of the Situation in Haiti on 24 January 2010

 

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 24 JANUARY 2010

 

BBC World / News:

Haiti capital toll "tops 150,000". The confirmed death toll from Haiti's devastating earthquake has risen above 150,000 in the Port-au-Prince area according to Haiti's Communications Minister who also told the news agency AP (Associated Press) that the death toll is based on bodies collected in and around Port-au-Prince by state firm CNE.

Many more remain uncounted under the rubble in the capital and elsewhere including the towns of Jacmel and Leogane.

The focus has shifted to aid.

 

1 million Haitians have now left Port-au-Prince, and 600,000 have been made homeless by the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010.

 

Danish DR1 (Text-TV / Teletext):

Norway doubles its aid to Haiti and transmits 200 million Norwegian Kroner to the relief work for the victims. The money is to be distributed between UN organizations and voluntary relief organizations. In particular relief / aid to women and children shall be given priority.

 

The UN to employ local 220,000 Haitians. The UN is identifying 500 sites outside Port-au-Prince where camps are to be built for the homeless, people without shelter. 220,000 local Haitians are employed to help build emergency / makeshift houses. Mr Henrik Kastoft from the UN's Development Programme UNDP says: "It has turned out to be an efficient model employing local people. By employing one Haitian, we help 5".

130,000 Haitians have accepted the government's offer to be sent to the countryside.

 

According to the United Nations 132 Haitians have been rescued from the rubble - this number of rescued after such a devastating earthquake is record high.

 

TV2 Text-TV (TV2 gossip) on Text-TV:

On Saturday evening the "Canada for Haiti" show starring among others Celine Dion, Nelly Furtado and James Cameron was broadcast live from Toronto.

 

Thursday Leo DiCapricio donated 1 million $ to emergency relief work in Haiti.

Saturday George Clooney donated 1 million $ to Haiti.

At the beginning of the week the fund "Not on our watch" initiated by George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Don Cheadle sent 1 million £ to Haiti.

 

Port in Haiti is expected to open on Monday, 25 February 2010. The emergency relief goods can reach their destination quicklier when the port can take delivery of ship containers, as this will speed up the distribution of food, medicine and other supplies. Ulrik Jørgensen, press agent in Danish Red Cross, just returned from Haiti. He says that it will really make a big difference when the port opens. Currently only one landing slot can be used in the airport meaning that many aircrafts/planes have to wait or land in the Dominican Republic.

 

ZDF text:

Haiti stops adoptions of Haitian children to prevent child trafficking. New adoptions are forbidden or at least stopped after reports of increase in child traficking. Only adoptions already approved before the earthquake struck on 12 January 2010 are allowed. Due to child traficking the Haitian government intensified the border control.

 

Record-high amount collected after the US Gala for Haiti: 58 million $ or 41 million Euro. This is a new record of donations in connection with a show like this. 130 Hollywood actors and musicians performed including Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and COLDPLAY.

 

A young man (23 or 25 years old) saved after 11 days. A French team of firemen rescued the young man from the rubble of a collapsed shop at a hotel in Port-au-Prince. Wismond Exantus told the French news agency AFP that he took refuge under a table and was lucky enough to have coca cola and biscuits within reach - that saved his life. He was able to move a little, but not to free himself by digging. He had told the rescuers that there were 4-5 other people in there - alive.

 

DR1 TTV (latest news):

Italian criticism of Haiti relief efforts. Guido Bertolaso, the Italian Minister for Civil Security criticizes the international relief work and efforts for lacking leadership. "The USA should have been in charge of relief efforts in Haiti". He is in Haiti to coordinate relief efforts and describes "the terrible situation that could have been handled much better". He warns against the risk of unrest among the Haitian population.

 

The worst hit towns have no food. For 12 days the inhabitants of Leogane 30 km away from Port-au-Prince have not received any emergency relief. On Sunday the first amphibious ships arrived with food for the town - the worst hit town being completely destroyed by the earthquake. Thomas Ubbesen, a reporter from Danish TV channel DR, was shocked when visiting Leogane. He thought that nothing could be worse than what he had seen in Port-au-Prince, but this was even worse. Not one single house was standing. The inhabitants were starving - many of them had nothing to eat and had not eaten anything since the earthquake struck on 12 January 2010.

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All-Star Haiti Telethon raises $57 million, so far

 

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 25 JANUARY 2010

 

ALL-STAR HAITI TELETHON RAISES $57 MILLION, SO FAR

 

(01/24/2010 | 08:50 AM - GMA News.TV)

 

NEW YORK – Organizers for the all-star "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon say the event raised $57 million — and counting.

 

"The public has set a new standard of giving for a relief telethon with 'Hope for Haiti Now,' and the donations continue to come in," Lisa Paulsen, president and CEO of the Entertainment Industry Foundation, said in a statement released Saturday. The group is helping to oversee the funds gathered from the event.

 

The two-hour telethon aired Friday night on the major networks and dozens of other channels, including MTV, Bravo, and PBS, and was also streamed live online. Stars like Brad Pitt, Beyonce, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and more used their presence to encourage donations for Haiti, following a Jan. 12 earthquake that killed an estimated 200,000 people.

 

The total released Saturday includes money raised by phone, text and the Web. It does not include donations by corporations or via iTunes, where people are able to buy performances of the event for 99 cents each, or the entire album for $7.99. Those funds also go to Haiti relief.

 

The "Hope for Haiti Now" CD is the biggest one-day pre-order in the site's history and the new song "Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour)" by Jay-Z, Rihanna, Bono and the Edge, debuted during the telethon, is the No. 1 single on iTunes.

 

People can donate via text, phone or through the "Hope for Haiti" Web site for the next six months. Among the organizations who will receive funds from the telethon include OXFAM America, UNICEF, and the Clinton-Bush Haiti Foundation.

 

- AP

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UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 25 JANUARY 2010

 

DR1 (text-TV/teletext):

 

UN: "It may take weeks before everyone has received aid!" This statement was made by Henrik Kastoft who is head of communications in the organization UNDP (UN's Development Programme).

He realizes that some areas in Haiti have not yet received any emergency relief and aid, and it may take some time before everyone has received aid, because the Haiti relief efforts are UN's largest task and biggest challenge ever. "Don't forget that we had to start from scratch here."

 

The Haiti earth quake was registered on the Danish island of Bornholm according to the website videnskab.dk (videnskab = science). The sound was registered by one of the sensitive seismometers (seismographs) run by Danish researchers at GEUS, the National Geological Surveys for Denmark and Greenland.

 

50 aftershocks after the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010.

 

 

 

TV2 TTV (Text-TV):

 

Registration of life under Haiti's rubble. French rescuers have registered movements under a collapsed building by radar 12 days after the devastating earthquake in Haiti on 12 January 2010. They started digging in the hope of finding a survivor. More than 20 rescuers are participating in this mission. The movements might also have been caused by an animal.

 

 

ZDF text:

 

The EU has agreed upon sending 350 paramilitary police officers to Haiti. The European Union Police Mission is to ensure the distribution of relief goods. Today the foreign ministers within the EU agreed on this in Brussels. Currently up to six European states participate in the Police Mission. France and Italy will send 100 policemen, the Netherlands 50, whereas Spain, Portugal and Roumania are planning to participate in / contribute to the Police Mission.

 

1 million homeless. According to the United Nations' Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs / OCHA, the number of homeless could be as many as 1 million (between 800,000 and 1 million) who urgently need shelter, tents and building materials. Makeshift camps for the survivors must be established and maintained. Still more people are leaving the capital Port-au-Prince. According to the Haitian government more than 150,000 people were killed by the earthquake on 12 January 2010.

 

 

ARD text:

 

Planning of rebuilding / reconstruction. The EU foreign ministers decided to send about 300 police officers with a paramilitary training to Haiti to ensure more security. In Montreal in Canada representatives from 20 countries prepare a donors conference. At the beginning of the meeting Canada talked in favour of a substantial debt relief. Few pledges were made in this meeting. A sort of Marshall Plan is needed. One of the globally largest group of exiled Haitians live in Montreal.

 

 

BBC WORLD:

 

Haiti quake operation "lacks leadership". Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy's civil protection service talked about "lack of leadership in international aid operations" and criticised the US forces in Haiti saying that the troops had no training in running a civilian relief operation.

It is believed that the quake on 12 January 2010 killed 200,000 people.

 

Britons donated £46 million to Haiti fund. Britons donated that amount to the Haiti earthquake appeal fund after another £4 million was added over the week-end.

200,000 people were killed and 2 million made homeless by the quake on 12 January 2010. The UK's Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) said relief agencies were working "round the clock" in Haiti. Meanwhile Development Secretary Douglas Alexander will meet religious groups to discuss how to provide long-term help for victims of the disaster.

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Hope for Haiti now - album and songs on iTunes

 

From MTV.com:

 

The "Hope for Haiti Now" album is the biggest one-day album pre-order in iTunes history and is currently the #1 iTunes album in 18 countries. The studio version of "Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour)," the original track performed by Bono, The Edge, Jay-Z and Rihanna during "Hope for Haiti Now," is currently the #1 song on iTunes in 12 countries.

 

"Hope for Haiti Now" will continue accepting donations for six months via the following methods:

 

» Online: http://www.hopeforhaitinow.org

» Phone: 877-99-HAITI

» Text: Text "GIVE" to 50555

»Mail: Hope For Haiti Now Fund, Entertainment Industry Foundation, 1201 West 5th Street, Suite T-700, Los Angeles, CA 90017

 

"Hope for Haiti Now" benefits Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, UNICEF, United Nations World Food Programme, Yele Haiti Foundation, and the newly formed Clinton Bush Haiti Foundation. Proceeds from "Hope for Haiti Now" will be split among each organization's individual funds for Haiti earthquake relief. With the exception of the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, each partner organization was selected for its history of operation and collaboration within the nongovernmental organization (NGO) community in Haiti.

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HAITI EARTHQUAKE - UNICEF SITUATION REPORT 7

 

HAITI EARTHQUAKE

 

UNICEF SITUATION REPORT No.7 , JANUARY 22

 

Situation overview

 

The Interial Minister has presented the numbers of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the six regions that have been evaluated. In Nord: 2,500, Northwest: 29,500, Centre: 20,530, Antibonite: around 50,000, Grand Goave: more than 10,000 and Sud: more than 10,000 persons. Totally more than 120,000 IDPs. The problem of IDPs is very big and the influx continues.

 

The result of the rapid needs assessments at Petit Goave confirms that there were no significant injuries or damages as a result of the aftershock on 20 January.

 

Aid is getting through to more and more locations. WFP and partners have the target of distributing food to 120,000 persons today, where each individual gets a 5-day ratio. The US Army also started airdropping yesterday. Since the start of the response, WFP has provided around 3 million meals to more than 200,000 people.

 

The Prime Minister has been expressing concern over the insufficiency of food and food items being distributed. It has also occurred that the same site received delivery twice. The Prime Minister urges the humanitarian agencies working in Haiti to further increase communication amongst them. He also pleaded that the humanitarian organizations should be working through the offices of the mayors in the region, in order to improve the cooperation.

 

While making rapid assessments on orphanages etc, UNICEF Child Protection teams have localized more than 70 children, some of them babies that urgently need to go to the hospital because they are injured or ill in some other way. UNICEF is trying to find some partner that could take care of the transportation.

 

Guido Bertolaso, the chief of the Italian Civil Protection, has arrived to Haiti together with a group of experts in emergency relief.

 

Humanitarian needs

 

There have been demonstrations in the streets because of the lack of food.

 

From Jacmel it is reported that the coordination is very slow. For instance, there are too many doctors, due to the lack of coordination. There has been no protection meeting. The first meeting between MINUSTAH, UN and the Canadian Forces is being planned for tomorrow.

 

There is a need for recreation kits for children in the sites.

 

Progress in hygiene is slow in Jacmel. Only three latrine blocks have been built.

 

UNICEF Response

 

Since yesterday, WFP with the support from UNICEF has been distributing 1,076 rations for children under the age of five at eleven small sites in Jacmel. WFP has also distributed 18 000 rations to grownups today. The rations consist of rice, tea, oil and salt which makes it possible for people to cook themselves. The sites are organized by the Committee de Quartier and most of them are small ones. The Committee de Quartier also helps with cooking when necessary.

 

The organization ACDI, VOCA and Save the Children want to start collaborating with UNICEF in the field of health, nutrition and protection. The collaboration is yet to be defined.

 

Programme Commitments:

 

Nutrition:

 

A car with supplies (vitamine A, zink, ORS, plumpynut) left Port au Prince today for Jacmel. The distribution of the supplies to severely malnourished children between six months and five years started this afternoon.

Representatives of the committee for nutrition yesterday visited orphanages to make an assessment of their needs of supplies. The distribution will be coordinated with the committee for Child Protection.

Terre des Hommes have reported on IDPs. UNICEF has been in touch with Terres des Hommes to see how UNICEF can help with food distribution.

UNICEF is working on contracts with ACF to operate in nutrition programs and concerns.

 

Health:

 

Today, UNICEF met with the director of immunization programme at the Ministry HAITI of Health in order to discuss vaccinations. Early next week there starts a new initiative for DTP and DT. Within three weeks, the Measle and Rubella Campaign will start. Port au Prince has the highest priority, thereafter other areas affected by the earthquake. The cold chain is a problem since the refrigerators are run on propane gas, which there is a lack of, but UNICEF will be able to provide propane gas in time for the vaccination campaign to start.

 

PROGRAMME

 

Child Protection

 

Response

 

UNICEF has supported the mobilization of cadres of IBERS mobile teams to undertake rapid child protection assessments on sites, as well as at orphanages/institutions in Port Au Prince affected by the earthquake. These assessments include identifying key needs and providing NFI the following day. Currently, these teams are reaching some 10 sites per day, and the activity is being scaled up to reach 20 per day by next week. This is by no means sufficient to meet the magnitude of need, when considering the number of institutions/orphanages that were in Port au Prince before the earthquake and which have been affected. Due to challenges with Information Management, it has also not yet been possible to process the data that has come in – a preliminary analysis of assessment findings thus far will be available on Monday.

 

Through partners UNICEF Child Protection is reaching some 37,000 children through Child Protection Programming. These include a variety of programmatic themes, including psychosocial support, NFI support and referral for especially vulnerable children, non-formal education, adolescent programmes, services for child Gender Based Violence survivors and interim care arrangements for unaccompanied children, including family based care.

 

Child Protection programmes are being implemented both in areas directly affected by the earthquake and in those areas to which affected populations are moving. Partners in these projects include Save the Children, Solidarite pour les femmes; Aide Medicale International, Viva Rio, and IBERS, the child protection arm of the Ministry of Social Welfare.

 

In response to reports and risks of trafficking and illegal adoption of children from Haiti, UNICEF is supporting the Special Police Brigades for Child Protection to undertake monitoring of movement of children at the Port au Prince airport as well as along Border Areas.

 

Priorities

 

The immediate priority, both for the Child Protection Sub-Cluster and UNICEF response programme at the moment is ensuring the survival and protection of the most vulnerable unaccompanied children, including those in orphanages and institutions affected by the earthquake. The situation and needs of unaccompanied children is urgent and overwhelming at this stage. Through the urgent reporting form that has been developed by the child protection sub-cluster, there are more than 20 such reports coming in per day. Children are also being dispatched from hospitals either without being accompanied by adults or being in the company of adults that are not their relatives and there continues to be reports of organizations and groups attempting to fly children out of Haiti.Prevention of trafficking/illegal adoption as well as the registration of especially vulnerable unaccompanied children are key issues.

 

Gaps and Challenges

 

The lack of cars as well as human resources has impeded UNICEF’s ability to reach more sites per day. This is a key challenge to child protection activities, which require larger human and transportation resources.

 

Education:

 

Still, UNICEF is facing difficulties in filling the cluster of education because of lack of human resources.

 

HIV/AIDS:

 

Today there was an announcement through the radio that the organization AASON started a patient clinic for providing care for HIV-infected. People are being encouraged to go back to the clinic where they used to get treatment before the quake, but in case the clinics have been destroyed, the patients could get care in the AASON clinic.

 

Clusters:

 

Nutrition:

 

The cluster coordinator Mija Ververes together with Hedwig Deconinck (USAID) will arrive to Haiti tomorrow.

The strategy and the standards are being finalised engaging the government in a leading role.

The key constraints are communication and coordination and the capacity for storage. The plan for general food distribution is not fully implemented yet.

 

WASH:

 

Maximal production of main two companies can not serve all the needs that are increasing every day, so solutions have been analyzed and found. DINEPA is negotiating with private water distributor about water trucking and treatment and the cluster will support in wells and boreholes assessments. The cluster needs to identify new sources to meet the demand, and also to define a strategy for hygiene kit distribution.

Latrine constructions have started in three sites in Port-au-Prince and Petion-Ville.

 

Child Protection:

 

Currently there are 30 organizations participating in the sub-cluster. They have formed three working groups under the sub-cluster to look at specific issue.

The three groups are:

1. Identification and registration of unaccompanied children. In the first phase those most vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and violence, including all those under 5 years of age, will be registered.

2. Interim care arrangements for unaccompanied children and 3. Development and integration of child protection strategy within the Shelter Cluster Strategy scenarios. The Shelter Cluster has developed a draft strategy presenting three shelter scenarios that will be applied in response to this disaster (support to spontaneous settlements; planned transitional sites for larger populations; host family arrangements). Based on these shelter scenarios, the CW Sub-Cluster will develop strategies to ensure mechanisms for child protection in all contexts.

 

The sub-cluster has now agreed upon and finalized a number of key tools, including Inter-agency agreed upon common Child Protection Rapid Assessment and urgent action reporting form on urgent child protection risks in particular areas. A who, what, where mapping tool to begin collecting information is being implemented to meet key gaps.

 

Key child protection issues and concerns have been integrated in the UNDAC Inter-Cluster Assessment that will be undertaken in all affected areas next week. Child protection staff from government and NGOs have also been identified to form part of the assessment teams that will undertake the assessment.

 

The Sub-Cluster, through the coordinator and MINUSTAH-Child Protection, is participating in the Shelter Cluster to ensure that child protection concerns are integrated in to both the development of Shelter Strategies, as well as site planning.

 

Media and Communication:

 

Key media activities undertaken and planned:

 

Today, for instance CNN, the Spanish, Canadian and Italian televisions are making reportages. Tomorrow, CNN international will make a live interview with Representative Guido Cornale.

List of spokespersons: Representative Guido Cornale, sr communication officer Kent Page and communication officer Roshan Kahdivi.

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Updates of the situation in Haiti on 26 January 2010

 

Danish TV2 Teletext / Text TV:

14-year old Guirlande survived 13 days in the rubble and was rescued today from the rubble of her home. "I prayed to the Lord". A family friend heard Guirlande. She had been hiding under her bed which protected her against the falling rubble. She had a bottle (or the like) of water within reach.

 

Two aftershocks in Haiti 2 weeks to the day after the devastating earthquake.

According to US Geological Surveys / USGS an earthquake measured at 4.4 at the open Richter scales shook Haiti at 6.16 local time. A Haitian had woken up at around 5 local time because of a minor earthquake. "It was not so bad - only shaking a little".

 

 

Danish TV2 News interviewed a man who originates from Haiti. He had lived in the USA for many years and participated in the Vietnam war. After all that he had experienced and seen during the war there, he felt that he could cope with anything. He had returned to his native Haiti to help the poor population and in particular orphans. When the earthquake struck, his nephew rescued a baby, while 5 young relatives were dead. Now the man houses 36 people up in the mountains.

 

 

ARD text: Haiti song will be performed by many artists including a complete Take That, i.e. inclusive of Robbie Williams. Other artists performing the song will be Mariah Carey, Susan Boyle, Rod Stewart, Kylie Minogue, Leona Lewis plus James Blunt. The charity song is a cover version of the REM classic "Everybody hurts".

 

International donors conference to be held in March in New York in United Nations' headquarters. The USA will organize the conference. The long-term aid to Haiti is to be planned at the conference.

Jean-Max Bellerive, Haiti's Prime Minister estimates that 5 to 10 years of foreign aid will be needed to rebuild the country.

Participating in the meeting in Canada were representatives from Canada, the USA and Brazil (SVT Text - Swedish Teletext).

 

SVT Text - Swedish Teletext / Text-TV: Chaos when there is not sufficient food. According to the United Nations World Food Programme (WPF) the world's supplies of ready-prepared meals in Haiti are soon emptied out. The head of WFP, Josette Sheeran said that there was an urgent need for ready-prepared meals for Haiti. And it is important that those distributing aid in Haiti are escorted by military - if not, there will be an unruly crowd in connection with the distribution of food, and the weaker Haitians will not get any food.

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From UNICEF (received 26 January 2009):

 

Now two weeks have passed since Haiti was hit by the earthquake that triggered the biggest humanitarian disaster in modern times. Millions of people have lost their homes and are dependent on emergency aid from the outside world.

 

Despite difficulties, the relief efforts are well under way. UNICEF distributes among other things clean water, medicines and hospital equipment for which there is still a desperate need.

 

This week UNICEF begins to vaccinate 360,000 children under five years against diphtheria, polio, tetanus, rubella and measles. At this stage of the disaster it is critical to protect children against life-threatening diseases that spread quickly when many people live close together under extremely primitive conditions.

 

You can read more about the relief efforts in the latest situation report (posted here yesterday) and a brief summary of UNICEF's efforts in Haiti below. And on UNICEF Denmark's homepage you can continuously monitor developments in Haiti.

 

Thanks to all who already have supported the collection for Haiti's children. You can still make a contribution to http://www.unicef.dk / Haiti

 

Best regards

Steen M. Andersen

Secretary General, UNICEF Denmark

 

--------------------------------------------------

 

Short on UNICEF's relief efforts in Haiti:

 

Water and sanitation: UNICEF is in charge of UN's overall efforts to provide clean water and sanitation. Every day water is delivered to hospitals, orphanages and other institutions as well as distribution points/lines spread throughout Port-au-Prince.

 

Health: This week UNICEF begins to vaccinate 360,000 children under five years against diphtheria, polio, tetanus, rubella and measles to prevent epidemics of life-threatening diseases.

 

Nutrition: There are established nutrition centres to treat malnourished children in the makeshift (temporary) camps in the area around Jacmel. The first supplies of nutritious nut mixtures, vitamin A and powders to treat dehydration have already been distributed.

 

Protection of children: UNICEF is visiting orphanages and other institutions to help vulnerable children. UNICEF is working with the Red Cross and Save the Children to find and register lost children in order to trace their families and protect children against abuse, trafficking and illegal adoption.

 

Emergency Supplies: UNICEF World Warehouse in Copenhagen and the regional warehouses in Panama and Dubai will be continuously sending relief to the needy children and their families.

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UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 24 + 25 JANUARY 2010

 

HAITI GOVERNMENT: 150K BODIES RECOVERED IN CAPITAL

 

(01/24/2010 | 11:23 PM - GMA News.TV)

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The confirmed death toll from Haiti's devastating earthquake has topped 150,000 in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area alone, the communications minister said Sunday, with many more thousands dead around the country or still buried under the rubble.

 

Communications minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue told The Associated Press that the figure is based on a body count in the capital and outlying areas by CNE, a state company that has been collecting corpses and burying them in a mass grave north of Port-au-Prince. It does not include other affected cities such as Jacmel, where thousands are believed dead, nor does it account for bodies burned by relatives.

 

The United Nations said Saturday the government had confirmed 111,481 bodies; all told, authorities have estimated 200,000 dead from the magnitude-7.0 quake, according to Haitian government figures cited by the European Commission.

 

"Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble — 200,000, 300,000?" Lassegue said. "Who knows the overall death toll?"

 

Experts say chances are slim that more survivors will be found in that debris, although rescuers pulled a man buried for 11 days in the wreckage on Saturday.

 

Crews dug a tunnel through the rubble of a fruit and vegetable shop to reach Wismond Exantus, who is in his 20s. He was placed on a stretcher and given intravenous fluids as onlookers cheered, and later told the AP he survived by diving under a desk during the quake and later consuming some cola, beer and cookies in the cramped space.

 

"I was hungry, but every night I thought about the revelation that I would survive," Exantus said from his hospital bed.

 

Haiti's government has declared an end to searches for living people trapped under debris, and officials are shifting their focus to caring for the thousands of survivors living in squalid, makeshift camps.

 

U.N. relief workers said the shift is critical: While deliveries of food, medicine and water have ticked up after initial logjams, the need continues to be overwhelming and doctors fear outbreaks of disease in the camps.

 

In the notorious slum of Cite Soleil, the site of some looting and violence since the quake, U.S. and Brazilian soldiers handed out food and water Sunday morning to thousands of men, women and children who lined up at a health center.

 

The U.S. soldiers brought 2,000 food rations, 75,000 high-energy biscuits and 9,000 bottles of water, while the Brazilians had 8 tons of food in small bags of uncooked beans, salt, sugar and sardines, as well as 15,000 liters of water.

 

Lunie Marcelin, 57, said her entire family — including six grown children who live with her — survived the quake, but they had no money to buy food.

 

The handouts "will help us, but it is not enough," she said. "We need more."

 

In the United States, organizers of the all-star "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon said Saturday that the event raised $57 million — and counting. The two-hour telethon aired Friday night and was also streamed live online. Stars such as Brad Pitt, Beyonce, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and more used their presence to encourage donations for Haiti.

 

As many as 200,000 people have fled Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. About 609,000 people are homeless in the capital's metro area, and the United Nations estimates that up to 1 million could leave Haiti's destroyed cities for rural areas already struggling with extreme poverty.

 

The U.S. Geological Survey said Sunday it has recorded 52 aftershocks of magnitude 4.5 or greater since the Jan. 12 quake. - AP

 

 

150,000 HAITI QUAKE VICTIMS BURIED, GOVERNMENT SAYS

 

(01/25/2010 | 07:17 AM - GMA News.TV)

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The truckers filling Haiti's mass graves with bodies reported ever higher numbers: More than 150,000 quake victims have been buried by the government, an official said Sunday.

 

That doesn't count those still under the debris, carried off by relatives or killed in the outlying quake zone.

 

"Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble — 200,000? 300,000? Who knows the overall death toll?" said the official, Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue.

 

Dealing with the living, meanwhile, a global army of aid workers was getting more food into people's hands, but acknowledged falling short. "We wish we could do more, quicker," said U.N. World Food Program chief Josette Sheeran, visiting Port-au-Prince.

 

In the Cite Soleil slum, US soldiers and Brazilian U.N. peacekeeping troops distributed food. Lunie Marcelin, 57, said the handouts will help her and six grown children "but it is not enough. We need more."

 

The Haitian government was urging many of the estimated 600,000 homeless huddled in open areas of Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million, to look for better shelter with relatives or others in the countryside. Some 200,000 were believed already to have done so, most taking advantage of free government transportation, and others formed a steady stream out of the city on Sunday.

 

International experts searched for sites to erect tent cities for quake refugees on the capital's outskirts, but such short-term solutions were still weeks away, said the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental agency.

 

"We also need tents. There is a shortage of tents," said Vincent Houver, the Geneva-based agency's chief of mission in Haiti. Their Port-au-Prince warehouse has 10,000 family-size tents, but some 100,000 are needed, he said. The organization has appealed for $30 million for that and other needs, and has received two-thirds of that so far.

 

In the aftermath of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake, the casualty estimates have been necessarily tentative. Lassegue told The Associated Press the government's figure of 150,000 buried, from the capital area alone, was reported by CNE, a state company collecting corpses and burying them north of Port-au-Prince.

 

That number would tend to confirm an overall estimate of 200,000 dead reported last week by the European Commission, citing Haitian government sources. The United Nations, meanwhile, was sticking Sunday with an earlier confirmed death toll of at least 111,481, based on recovered bodies.

 

The final casualty estimates, which the European Commission said also include some 250,000 injured, will clearly place the Jan. 12 earthquake among the deadliest natural catastrophes of recent times. That list includes: the 1970 Bangladesh cyclone, believed to have killed 300,000 people; the 1974 northeast China earthquake, which killed at least 242,000 people; and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, with 226,000 dead.

 

One who wouldn't die in Port-au-Prince was Wismond Exantus, who was extricated from the rubble Saturday. He spoke with the AP from his cot in a French field hospital on Sunday, saying the first thing he wanted to do was find a church to give thanks.

 

He spent the 11 days buried in the ruins of a hotel grocery store praying, reciting psalms and sleeping, he said. "I wasn't afraid because I knew they were searching and would come for me," he said.

 

With further such rescues highly unlikely so long after the quake, Haiti's government has declared an end to search operations for the living, shifting the focus more than ever to caring for the thousands surviving in squalid, makeshift camps.

 

The World Food Program had delivered about 2 million meals to the needy on Friday, up from 1.2 million on Thursday, Sheeran said. But she acknowledged that much more was needed.

 

"This is the most complex operation WFP has ever launched," she said.

 

The scene Sunday at Cite Soleil, the capital's largest and most notorious slum, showed the need.

 

Thousands of men, women and children lined up and waited peacefully for their turn as the American and Brazilian troops handed out AID — the Americans gave ready-to-eat meals, high-energy biscuits and bottled water, the Brazilians passed out small bags holding uncooked beans, salt, sugar and sardines, as well as water.

 

The need for medical care, especially surgery, postoperative care and drugs, still overwhelmed the help available, aid agencies reported. In the isolated southern port city of Jacmel alone, about 100 patients needed surgery as of Friday, the U.N. reported. Medical personnel were there, but not the necessary surgery supplies.

 

In Port-au-Prince, meanwhile, the aid group Doctors Without Borders said its inflatable hospital — six large inflatable tents flown in from France — was preparing for its first operations.

 

The world's nations have pledged some $1 billion in emergency aid to Haiti. Organizers of Friday night's "Hope for Haiti Now" international telethon reported the event raised $57 million, with more pledges from ordinary people still coming in. - AP

 

 

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY MEETS FOR HAITI TALKS

 

(01/25/2010 | 09:43 AM - GMA News.TV)

 

MONTREAL — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Haiti's prime minister and foreign ministers from a host of nations meet in Montreal on Monday to try to improve relief efforts in the international community's first meeting since Haiti's devastating earthquake.

 

Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said Sunday that the conference will review the progress of aid delivery to Haiti since the Jan. 12 earthquake and lay the groundwork for a larger meeting that will focus on long-term reconstruction.

 

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive arrived in Canada ahead of the conference for a Sunday meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

 

"The task ahead of you is unimaginable," Harper said to Bellerive before the two began private talks. "I say to you Jean-Max as a fellow prime minister, I just can't imagine."

 

Bellerive expressed his gratitude to Canada and said he came to discuss the support that will be needed.

 

"But we are fully conscious that the prime responsibility for our future lies in the hands of the Haitian government and the Haitian people," he added.

 

Harper and foreign ministers from more than a dozen countries, eight international bodies and six major non-governmental organizations will convene on Monday.

 

"It's not a donor or pledging conference," Cannon said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's to make sure we have an action plan. We want to coordinate better in the short term and make sure we all know who is doing what and how."

 

Cannon said one goal is to "physically get the Haitian government back on its feet." The quake destroyed key government buildings, including the National Palace, hampering the work of what was already a weak and inefficient state.

 

"They don't have any offices," Cannon said. "I was chatting with Mrs. Clinton the other day. She mentioned that an American government building remained intact and said they were turning it over to the Haitian government so that they could at least set up temporary offices."

 

Cannon said the morning session will take stock of the aid efforts. He said ministers will hear from Bellerive, the United Nations and non-governmental agencies like the Red Cross.

 

Ministers will meet in the afternoon to work on the steps needed ahead of the larger reconstruction conference, where money will be pledged. Cannon said he expects the date and location of that conference to be announced Monday.

 

Governments have pledged nearly $1 billion in aid to Haiti, according to an Associated Press estimate, including $575 million from the European Union's 27 nations.

 

Monday's meeting comes as a global army of aid workers was delivering more food into people's hands in Haiti, but the efforts were still falling short. U.N. World Food Program chief Josette Sheeran, visiting Port-au-Prince, said Sunday said aid groups wished they could do more and do it more quickly.

 

One Haitian government official said more than 150,000 victims have been buried by the government and that nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble.

 

Canada has deep ties to Haiti. More than 100,000 people of Haitian descent live in Canada, most of them in Montreal.

 

After the Montreal meeting, Bellerive will travel to Ottawa to meet with Canada's Haitian-born governor general Michaelle Jean.

 

Jean, the representative of Queen Elizabeth II as Canada's head of state, broke down in tears during a press conference after the Jan. 12 earthquake. She said it's as if an atomic bomb had fallen on Port-au-Prince. - AP

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UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 26 + 27 JANUARY 2010

 

John Travolta lands in Haiti piloting relief supplies

 

(01/26/2010 | 01:17 PM - GMA News.TV)

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — John Travolta has landed his own jet in Haiti carrying relief supplies and a team including doctors and Scientology ministers. The 55-year-old actor flew the Boeing 707 from Florida on Monday carrying 4 tons of ready-to-eat military rations and medical supplies for earthquake victims. Among those accompanying Travolta is his wife, actress Kelly Preston. The Church of Scientology says the pair planned to return home after unloading their passengers and supplies. - AP

 

RP medical team to leave for Haiti Monday night

 

 

HAITIANS SEARCH FOR THEIR DEAD: `I NEED THE BODY'

 

(01/26/2010 | 07:22 AM - GMA News.TV)

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – In what's left of one family's home, in what remains of one destroyed neighborhood, Jean-Rene Lochard has retrieved the bodies of his mother, brother, sister-in-law and nephew, and buried them beside the ruins, one by one and with a priest's blessing.

 

On Monday, he dug deeper, searching for his brother's 5-year-old son. Only when he finds the boy will he rest. "I need the body to bury him," he said. "It's important to bury the bodies."

 

With 150,000 bodies already in mass graves, international teams, grieving families, sympathetic neighbors and sometimes even strangers were pulling at the rubble with tools or bare hands in countless corners of this devastated city. Thirteen days after the killer earthquake, they were desperate to recover some of the thousands of Port-au-Prince's lost dead — to close each tragic circle, to lay loved ones in the earth to rest in peace.

 

For the living — the homeless spread across empty lots, parks and plazas in the hundreds of thousands — there was little rest as aid agencies struggled to fill their needs for food and water, and to get them tents to shelter their families against the burning tropical sun.

 

In front of the wrecked National Palace, people's desperation boiled over. Uruguayan U.N. peacekeepers had to fire pepper spray into the air to try to disperse thousands jostling for food.

 

The overwhelmed soldiers finally retreated, and young men rushed forward to grab the bags of pinto beans and rice, emblazoned with the US flag, pushing aside others — including one pregnant woman who collapsed and was trampled.

 

Thousands of people are huddled nearby in the Champs de Mars plaza, many with nothing more than a plastic sheet to protect them from sun and rain.

 

"We live like dogs," said Espiegle Amilcar, 34. "We're sleeping, eating and going to the bathroom in the same place."

 

The global agency supplying tents said it already had 10,000 stored in Haiti and at least 30,000 more would be arriving. But, said the International Organization for Migration, "the supply is unlikely to address the extensive shelter needs." The group estimates 100,000 family-sized tents are needed; the U.N. says up to 1 million people need shelter.

 

Meanwhile, the Haitian government and international groups are preparing a more substantial tent city on Port-au-Prince's outskirts, the first of more than a half-dozen sites that officials hope will shelter the displaced before the onset of spring rains and summer hurricanes.

 

In Montreal on Monday, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and officials of more than two dozen other donor nations and international organizations met to assess the progress of the relief effort.

 

Haiti will need "more and more and more in order to complete the task of reconstruction," Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told them. He said his impoverished nation lost 60 percent of its gross domestic product in the quake, the economic activity centered on Port-au-Prince.

 

Returning from Haiti, international Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally said in Geneva that a NEW Port-au-Prince must be planned. "It's going to require, minimum, a generation," he said, adding that the need for heavy equipment to tear down damaged buildings was growing.

 

That prospect was what was driving Jean-Rene Lochard to dig harder, with the help of neighbors and hired workers, to find his little nephew in the collapsed six-story home, an enormous pile of cracked concrete and twisted metal bars in Port-au-Prince's western district of Carrefour-Feuilles.

 

"The contractors are going to come and smash everything else, so we want to find him first," Lochard, 42, said as he sat amid the remains of a family's life — shoes, bits of clothing, a small red Elmo doll.

 

When the magnitude-7.0 quake struck on Jan. 12, Lochard recalled, "I was going crazy," because the house completely collapsed around him as he dashed outside. Eight of the 14 family members who lived there perished.

 

He and others quickly rescued an injured 17-year-old niece, and then, four days after the quake, a 5-year-old nephew, Samael. "He was in a state of shock, so traumatized he couldn't speak," said Jacques Lochard, 45, Jean-Rene's brother.

 

Then they started pulling out the bodies, first that of those children's father, police commander Carlo Lochard, then those of his other children, including 8-month-old Anaelle, owner of the little Elmo doll. Finally, the body of the family matriarch, Ismeda Edmond, 72, was found six days after the quake, in the entrance to the dining room.

She "was like the neighborhood godmother. Everyone in the neighborhood would come to see her," said family friend Jean-Louis Nold.

 

The bodies of three were buried in a city cemetery, but four others — the men's mother, brother, sister-in-law and nephew — were so badly decomposed that the morgue refused to receive them, and they were interred in the back garden, beneath a breadfruit tree, in rough requiems for a devoutly Roman Catholic family. "Every time we find a body, we call the priest," Jean-Rene Lochard said.

 

Now, on Monday, they searched unrelentingly for 5-year-old Jovany. In traditional Haitian families, a nephew is like a son. "We are a united family. That's why we live together in the same house," Jacques Lochard said. "Nobody can imagine what we are feeling."

 

In other pitiful scenes across Port-au-Prince, family survivors clambered over and clawed at rubble in hopes of finding their loved ones. Others simply sat hopelessly. And some still held out hope of finding people alive, two days after the last such "miracle" rescue.

 

"There's still hope. We think that people could still be alive," Mexican search team chief Hector Mendez said outside the ruins of the Montana Hotel, where some 40 Americans and many other foreigners were believed buried.

 

But he acknowledged, "There are many, many bodies."

 

- AP

 

 

US troops treat 35-year-old Haiti man pulled from rubble

 

(01/27/2010 | 06:47 PM - GMA News.TV)

 

Members of the US 82nd Airborne Division treated a 35-year-old man purportedly pulled from the rubble of a downtown Port-au-Prince building in earthquake-stricken Haiti, witnesses said on Tuesday.

According to Associated Press reporters on the scene, Rico Debrivell had a broken leg and other minor injuries. It was not immediately determined how long he had been under the rubble.

Debrivell is believed to have been pulled out of the debris by local residents and was later treated by the US medics who were working in the commercial center of downtown Port-au-Prince.

The area has been looted extensively since the January 12 magnitude-7 quake that devastated the Haitian capital.

– AP

 

BBC World: Man rescued in Haiti quake rubble - A man was pulled alive from the rubble 2 weeks after the earthquake. US troops rescued the man from the ruins of a building in centre of city and he was taken to hospital. He was trapped under the rubble for 12 days, the military said - and he was severely dehydrated.

The rescue came 14 days after the 7.0-magnitude quake which killed as many as 200,000 people on 12 January 2010.

 

German ZDFtext: 31-year-old man rescued alive from rubble after 12 days by US troops. He had a broken leg and minor face injuries. He was severely dehydrated. A total of 134 people have been rescued alive from the rubble - Saturday one man was rescued.

 

ARDtext: US troops have found and rescued a survivor from the rubble after 12 days in connection with clearing and cleaning up work.

The UN World Food Program makes an appeal for more aid. The people will need aid for a longer time than expected.

UNICEF together with the Haitian government plans a big vaccination campaign. 600,000 children are to be vaccinated against measles and tetanus.

In March there will be held a donors conference.

 

Danish TV2 TTV (Text TV):

Minister wants to move Port-au-Prince. The Canadian foreign minister Lawrence Cannon: A huge task of rebuilding and reconstructing Haiti is lying ahead. It is a question whether the rebuilding should take place where Port-au-Prince is situated

today. Because that area is threatened by new earth quakes.

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