| Situation Update No. 70 Ref.no.: EQ-20100112-24531-HTI
Situation Update No. 70
On 2010-01-22 at 04:59:09 [UTC]
Event: Earthquake
Location: Haiti Capital City Port-au-Prince area
Number of Deads: > 75000 person(s)
Number of Injured: 750000 person(s)
Situation: Haiti's prime minister on Thursday expressed growing frustration with the pace of aid relief to his country, saying the international campaign to deliver food and water to earthquake victims has been hampered by logistical problems at almost every step. "Effectively, there is a lot of problems. There is a lot of frustration in the government, in the population, but also in the international community," Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told reporters at the Canadian Embassy. Bellerive was there for a meeting with Canadian Ambassador Gilles Rivard to discuss ways to speed up the delivery of provisions to hundreds of thousands of Haitians left homeless and near-destitute by the Jan. 12 disaster. Among the most pressing issues is co-ordinating the movements of food and water trucks to refugee camps across Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas laid waste by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake. The Haitian government has identified 329 different places where large groups of people have congregated in spontaneous camps. "So distribution is difficult," Bellerive said. The Haitian prime minister said "the spontaneity" of the aid caused a problem because the content of the arriving cargo planes was initially unknown. Then, Haitian and international officials struggled to unload and store aid. Finally, gasoline shortages delayed distribution even more. "We had problems due to several days lack of gasoline. We have gasoline in Haiti but the distribution was difficult," he said. Government officials said they planned to relocate many Haitians from ruined neighbourhoods to new villages being erected in haste. As many as 500,000 people are estimated homeless. Thousands of victims will be moved to areas south and north of Port-au-Prince, though the government has yet to finalize the sites where the villages will be constructed.
"The government has made available to people free transportation," said Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, the Haitian interior minister. "A large operation is taking place." Rivard said the World Food Program experienced major problems co-ordinating the influx of aid arriving at Port-au-Prince's congested airport. But he said WFP officials were increasing their capacity every day and intended to serve 100,000 meals on Thursday, up sharply from earlier in the week. "I can understand the frustration of the people in the street," Rivard said. "Water is not an issue in Port-au-Prince at this moment. It's food distribution, food logistics that represent an issue. Lack of trucks." There are conflicting reactions among many Haitians to the sudden influx of foreign troops into the capital city to provide aid and to help with basic reconstruction; tasks such as clearing roads clogged by the ruins of collapsed buildings. Hundreds of people line the fence outside the collapsed Haitian presidential palace, which U.S. troops have been using as a landing spot for troops delivering aid and providing security. Many of them cheered the first arrival on Tuesday. But others see it as a sign of their own government's impotence in the earthquake's aftermath, and bristle at the ever more frequent patrols of U.S. marines and soldiers from other nations. Rivard said it is "completely appropriate" that the international community has responded with military personnel to help ease the crisis. About 1,100 Canadian military personnel are supporting the Haiti mission along with about 13,000 U.S. troops and soldiers from several other countries.
The total number of Americans may ultimately top 15,000. "The time will come soon where these troops will be spread over Port-au-Prince and the region affected, and I think the presence will be probably less visible but nevertheless very important," Rivard said. "I think you have to be careful (about perception). Even though the Haitians suffered a lot, they still believe that the government has to remain in charge." In Ottawa, Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced the Canadian military would deploy a field hospital to the devastated coastal city of Leogane, about 30 kilometres west of Haiti, to provide medical care to thousands of local residents now suffering increasingly from infections to crush injuries suffered during the earthquake. An existing Canadian Medical Assistance Teams field hospital, which began seeing patients in Leogane on Tuesday, has been inundated with hundreds of people in desperate need of care. The first members of the Ontario-based NGO arrived in Haiti two days after the earthquake destroyed or damaged about 80 per cent of Leogane's buildings. Canadian mayors from across the country also endorsed a proposal co-sponsored by Montreal and Calgary to create a bank of municipal experts along with a new fund that would offer support for rebuilding basic infrastructure and services in areas of Haiti that were devastated by the quake. The mayors were in Ottawa Thursday for a special meeting to discuss priorities in advance of the federal budget. Claude Dauphin, mayor of the Montreal borough of Lachine, said that municipalities could also contribute to the fund which would be managed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
A cargo ship loaded with military vehicles and equipment destined for the Canadian Forces in Haiti was set to depart Quebec City Thursday night. About 100 utility, support and logistics vehicles and 200 sea containers were being loaded Thursday onto MV Wloclawek — a civilian ship under contract to the Forces. "This is all the material required for the Valcartier troops to do their job in Haiti," said Maj. Devon Matsalla, the service company commander. Aside from military equipment, the ship is carrying medical supplies, a water purifying system, water and food, communications and engineering material. But even as the Harper government focused on speeding the deployment of troops and supplies to Haiti, Canadian officials were still scrambling to locate 321 Canadian citizens who are still unaccounted for after the earthquake. Rivard expressed optimism that many of those people will be found alive, even though the official death toll of Canadians is expected to rise. "There are a lot of Canadians all over the country . . . They are maybe out of communication for the time being," he said. "I am quite optimistic that the number will not go very high. But there is no doubt there (are) more Canadians under the rubble." Many Haitians continue to seek ways they can get out of Haiti and reunite with family members living in Canada. In Ottawa, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney blasted opposition parties as "totally irresponsible" Thursday for seeking to expand the categories of Haitians who are being fast-tracked to Canada.
Kenney closed the door on calls to expand immigration sponsorship eligibility to siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews of Haitians in Canada. Such an expansion is advocated by the Liberals and NDP, as well as Haitian civic groups who want to rescue family from lives shattered by the earthquake. He said it would be unprecedented, "fundamentally unfair" to other countries and that opposition MPs are raising "totally unrealistic" expectations by advocating it. Kenney defended the Conservative government's policy — based on a previous Liberal government's template — while promising some of up to 150 Haitian children being adopted by Canadians will be flown out of the earthquake zone to Canada this weekend. "Following the earthquake, we had one Canadian-based officer for my ministry in Port-au-Prince and a damaged embassy and lost files," Kenney said at a news conference. "For them to imply that we can now start processing tens and eventually hundreds of thousands of additional applications when we are going to be struggling, burning the midnight oil, just to bring the few thousand close relatives here quickly, is totally irresponsible." About 5,000 Haitians are expected to come to Canada under fast-tracked rules announced last weekend in which Canadian citizens or permanent residents can sponsor family members who are "directly and significantly affected by the earthquake in Haiti." Eligible family members include spouses, common-law and conjugal partners, dependent or adoptive children, parents, grandparents and orphaned children under 18 who are siblings, nieces, nephews or grandchildren of a sponsor.
"Canada has close ties with many countries and it's very important in immigration policy that everyone is treated with equity, that you don't pick and choose based on a circumstance or a country," Kenney said. Meanwhile, Port-au-Prince is slowly returning to life. The streets are increasingly clogged with traffic. Street vendors are selling everything from fresh fruit to cellphones, and some banks have reopened. In the Port-au-Prince suburb of Carfoure, Michelet Jose sat in the back off a pickup truck carrying freshly painted coffins for the funeral of his brother and sister, both killed in the earthquake. |
