LES CAYES, Haiti — Desperation was growing among Haitians in the most remote parts of the country on Friday but international aid was finally, slowly reaching Haiti’s devastated southwestern peninsula nearly a week after a devastating earthquake.
In the city of Les Cayes, hundreds of people surrounded shipping trailers carrying supplies for earthquake victims, waiting for food and other basic necessities. In one part of the city, residents forced open the doors of a Haiti Red Cross truck and ran off carrying mattresses, which led authorities to attack some in the crowd before the vehicle could drive off.
U.N.’S Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, the first notable international figure to visit Haiti in the aftermath of the 7.2-magnitude quake, landed in Les Cayes to tour what she called “a dire and tragic situation.”
“The visit here today, upfront and very personal, to see so many babies, so much trauma, with women and with elderly people,” Mohammed said. “We need for the community, the international community, to get behind the Haitian government and people to recover as soon as we can.”
United Nations officials believe they have learned lessons from 2010 and the catastrophic earthquake the shattered much of Port-au-Prince. Unlike that quake, which killed more than 300,000 in the the teeming capital, damage from the latest is dispersed through remote rural areas. That appears to have dramatically lessened the death toll — nearly 2,200 as of Friday but still likely to rise — but also presents different challenges for the Haitian government and international relief effort going forward.
As an example, significant bridge and road failures slowed access and distribution of aid to some of the hardest-hit and remote towns.
Early Friday, there was no road access to the southwestern city of Jérémie, as pictures circulated on social media showing damage to the Dumarsais Estimé bridge, one of the main access routes. The public works department was working early afternoon to secure an alternate route.
On the encouraging side, the airport in Les Cayes, near the earthquake’s epicenter, had become the busy landing ground for relief arriving into Haiti as for injured people headed by airlift to hospitals in Port-au-Prince. Two U.S. military aircraft and several U.S. Coast Guard helicopters hovered over Les Cayes, arriving with provisions to the airport.
One of the helicopters, loaned to former Haitian Sen. Richard Herve Fourcand, was on route to Pic de Macaya, a mountainous region in the outskirts of the city to airlift a victim, one of many injured when tremors brought down parts of the mountain. Almost a week since the initial tremor, victims were still in need of immediate medical care in rural and remote areas. Fourcand and others laid injured and sick residents on their laps to transport them back to Les Cayes.
Other international organizations — including Swiss Humanitarian Aid, Medic Corps, Samaritan’s Purse and the United Nation’s World Food Program and International Organization for Migration — were on the ground assisting earthquake victims. Aid workers dragged suitcases and boxes packed with supplies and loaded them onto vehicles.
World Central Kitchen took a helicopter to survey two of their sites nearby where they have a team of about 40 people providing hot meals with local vegetables and ingredients. Hospital Albert Schweitzer, from the Central Plateau region of Haiti, had sent a team to deal with the response’s logistics.
Three army ships from the Dominican Republic were also stationed on the sea of Jérémie to aid earthquake victims. And in a special meeting of the Organization of American States’ Permanent Council on Friday, Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the U.S., Sir Ronald Sanders, announced a lofty payment of $40 million to Haiti, funded by the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility. The first installment of $15 million will be paid to the government early next week, and the other $25 million will be paid within the next two weeks, he said.
The Haiti National Police, meanwhile, said Thursday that it also was reinforcing the road to Martissant in Port-au-Prince with specialized police units to protect humanitarian aid from gangs and other threats.
The announcement was made after Haitian artist Widler Octavius, known as Wid, complained to the Miami Herald on Wednesday that the police commissioner assigned to Les Cayes had refused to provide him with a police escort to the hospital in nearby Port Salut where he was donating cooked meals and toiletries kits to quake victims. The police’s refusal left him at the mercy of bandits, he said, who attacked his group as they headed to the beachfront community.
“The police has taken all the necessary steps to reinforce its presence along the Martissant route,” police spokeswoman Marie-Michelle Verrier said during a Thursday press conference. “There are still threats along this road .... Everyone who has donations to take to the Great South, we will remind you again that the police are here to accompany you.”
The hectic day in Les Cayes was also marked by preparations to receive former Haitian President Michel Martelly, who arrived after 1 p.m. to survey damage from Saturday’s quake and powerful aftershocks. So far, 2,189 people have been reported killed and over 12,200 injured. An estimated 136,800 families are homeless and nearly 700,000 people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.
Martelly and his wife Sophia Martelly came in a private charter flight, reportedly from the Dominican Republic, bringing supplies with him. He said he was in the area as a private citizen in the name of his humanitarian foundation, Fondation Rose et Blanc.
“We are here to do what we’ve always done with the foundation. It’s not the former president that’s here, it’s the foundation that’s here,” said Martelly, who was greeted by a small crowd and quickly loaded into a Black Toyota SUV to tour damaged areas.
Martelly said he intended to distribute some medicines but his main focus was on ensuring hospitals were running smoothly and had enough gas to power generators. He also would try to bolster spirits, he said. “We are going to visit some people and let them know we are with them,” he said.
He had no comment about whether Haiti’s government was doing enough to aid victims.
“I haven’t been around to see firsthand what’s being done. But one thing I know, they always blame the government,” said Martelly, who oversaw the response to the 2010 earthquake. He said his biggest concern was to “change the way we’ve been doing things. The way we’ve been building, the way we’ve been thinking, the way we’ve been acting. The way we drive ourselves and our society, I think all of this has to be retaught.”
The U.N.’s Mohammed was also accompanied by Helen La Lime, U.N.’s special representative in Haiti, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and Director General of Haiti’s Health Ministry Dr. Laure Adrien.
“When you hear the figures of the destruction of schools, people’s homes, the numbers that have died ... it’s tragic,” Mohammed told the Herald.
Nearly a week after the storm, injured Haitians were still hobbling to hospitals seeking care for injuries. There were also concerns about a possible return of cholera, as Haitians are in need of potable water. Mohammed said assuring a good water supply and sanitation remain a huge part of the U.N. focus after working for the past 10 years to control the disease.
“Now what we have to do is safeguard that, so the gains that we had, given that the earthquake has caused considerable damage to infrastructure, is to quickly protect that,” she said.
Meanwhile, in South Florida, the aid organization Hope for Haiti told the Herald it had issued an “emergency appeal” to raise $5 million to fund earthquake relief and recovery efforts, in partnership with the Bob & Renee Parsons Foundations, which kicked off the effort with a $1 million gift.
The organization plans to fund medical supplies to support health partners on the ground, provide medicine and health consultations, rubble removal and rehabilitation of homes and other damaged buildings, water filtration systems and micro-grants aimed to support education and businesses.
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