The US Army is in charge of much of the aid effort in Haiti, but the haphazard management of aid flights into the country continues to hamper recovery. Jonathan Rugman reports.
Warning: viewers may find the accompanying footage distressing
President Obama’s decision to send a large chunk of armed troops to battle the non-existent infrastructure in Haiti has provided both backbone and complication to the rescue phase.
Management of the aid flights has been haphazard. Medecins sans Frontieres had three vital aid planes turned back, while a group of Scientologists managed to make it straight through.
Channel 4 News foreign affairs correspondent Jonathan Rugman has been talking to the Americans and looking at the continuing bottlenecks on the road to recovery.
US Marines landed on a beach west of the Haitian capital this morning. The US army is now the country’s most important lifeline.
12,000 soldiers have arrived so far, with another 4,000 en route.
The Americans are not just protecting convoys but distributing food and water in the capital and beyond.
And though the Haitians and the UN are officially in charge of this crisis, a new reality has dawned: only a full-scale army can lift Haiti off its knees.
At the main airport today US Army doctors were heading out to a hospital ship anchored offshore.
All this effort is one part altruism and one part ensuring that Haiti doesn’t become a failed state in America’s own backyard.
The search and rescue effort is now focusing on delivering food, water and medical care to the survivors. The dead still litter the capital, though.
Gangs armed with machetes are bypassing the bodies, scouring the ruins in search of anything they can eat or sell. The looting has not yet turned to widespread violence, but that is still the fear.
The UN’s latest estimate is that up to 150,000 have died in all. The number of Haitians homeless can only be guessed at – but 2 million is the going rate.
Many Haitians, living in pockets on their own streets, have received nothing. Waldeck Andre told Channel 4 News: “I lose my house and my brother and sisters and my friends.”
American doctors have opened a field hospital in Port-au-Prince, and it’s an oasis of relative comfort when doctors outside are still operating without anaesthetics on open wounds.