BY JACQUELINE CHARLES, DAVID OVALLE, TRENTON DANIEL, LESLEY CLARK AND FRANCES ROBLES
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- A 6.1 magnitude aftershock rocked Haiti Wednesday morning, shaking damaged buildings and sending panicked people running into the streets only eight days after the country's capital was devastated by a previous, stronger quake.
The U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday's quake hit at 6:03 a.m. about 35 miles west of the capital, near the town of Petit Goave. It struck at a depth of 13.7 miles but was located too far inland to generate any tidal waves in the Caribbean.
Frightened survivors wailed in terror following the aftershock. Many are still coping with the cataclysmic aftermath of the 7.0-magnitude quake that struck Jan. 12.
The aftershock briefly sowed panic at a wharf near the Port-au-Prince seaport, where hundreds of families were camping in squalor, hoping for a boat to take them to the countryside.
``We have nowhere else to go,'' said Richard Louis, 24, who joined 20 family members at the camp.
The shore was a sea of idling, dusty bodies, muddy suitcases, boxes and flies. A child on two sacks floated in the dirty water. A young man sat in the shell of an old JetSki, fitted with oars, rowing aimlessly in circles.
Refugees had commandeered six idle, rusting ferry boats, moored and with no plans to go anywhere. During the quake, the packed boats swayed, but no one left.
The aftershock also appears to have shaken free debris across the city.
In the neighborhood of Canopevert, chunks of concrete spilled onto a road, shutting it off -- and burying a man briefly before neighbors pulled him free.
At a small clothing store downtown, the quake exposed a trove of packaged clothes, triggering a frenzied wave of looters. Haitian police chased them off at least three times.
``It's not their fault. They have to steal it,'' said William Dejene, 15.
It was not immediately possible to ascertain what additional damage the new quake may have caused, but humanitarian agencies have reported extensive damage to cities outside Port-au-Prince.
While the U.S. military focuses on Port-au-Prince, Canada will take over the coordination of delivering aid to Jacmel and Leogane.
Both cities have suffered more than 50 percent loss of their housing stock, according to Haitian government officials.
Last week's 7.0-magnitude killed an estimated 200,000 people in Haiti, left 250,000 injured and made 1.5 million homeless. Its epicenter was near Leogane, about 20 miles west of the capital and near Petit Goave.
Leogane's main streets are virtually empty, except for a few residents trying to recover bodies buried in the rubble. Townspeople told The Washington Post that about 500 nuns, priests and students were crushed to death when the walls of the Sainte Rose de Lima School crumbled.
Small international medical teams began arriving Sunday, and they were quickly overwhelmed by the number of severely injured.
Given the extent of the damage to the capital, Haiti's provinces, historically forgotten by the central government, fear they have been overlooked again at this moment of dire need.
``It's beginning to move in here slowly,'' Pete Buth of Doctors Without Borders, the medical organization, told The Post. ``But I'm not going to tell you it's still any good''.
Buth's team arrived Sunday evening, five days after the quake. Surgical teams from Japan and Argentina pulled in Monday, setting up an operating suite inside the hospital compound where hundreds of families now live in makeshift shelters.
Aid has been slow to reach Leogane in part because the roads leading into the city are ruined. A giant crack splits the main highway into town in two, leaving a ditch with depths of up to 30 feet.
Officials estimate that 80 to 90 percent of the buildings in the town, which has about 150,000 residents, were heavily damaged.
In Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, ashen, ghostly survivors continued to be pulled from the rubble and the international community fought bottlenecks and rising tensions to provide aid to the shattered nation.
With the principal seaport still in shambles and the Port-au-Prince airport jammed, Army Maj. Gen. Daniel Allyn, deputy commander of the military operation in Haiti, said a runway in the town of Jacmel, on the south coast, will open for C-130 cargo flights in 24 to 48 hours, and another field near San Isidro, in neighboring Dominican Republic, would also be established within that time frame.
Allyn added that U.S. troops were working on repairing the Port-au-Prince seaport and another entry port north of the capital to increase the flow of humanitarian aid, fuel and supplies.
U.S and Haitian government officials and relief agencies have struggled to manage the massive entry of food, water, medicine, heavy equipment, troops, doctors and other supplies as time runs out for rescue workers to find survivors.
Advance teams from the Centers for Disease Control were on the ground Wednesday, meeting with Haitian health ministry officials and visiting hospitals and neighborhoods to assess potential public healthcare threats.
Typhoid and rabies could pose significant risks, said David Daigle, a CDC spokesman.
``Everyone is focused on acute care, but the next phase will be public health,'' he said. ``We're worried about typhoid. We know some conditions may in fact turn infectious''.
Humanitarian aid continued to arrive Wednesday amid growing desperation in a population that has endured eight days with little food, water and medical attention.
Despite the extra efforts, humanitarian agencies criticized the U.S. military's control of the capital's airfield, which has been choked with around-the-clock flights.
U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten defended the pace of aid delivery.
Roads are blocked and buildings are collapsed, he told The Miami Herald. ``If people were to realize the challenges we were dealing with here, they would be completely understanding and realize this is an extraordinary operation''.
Efforts are being coordinated among the international partners and the Haitian government.
``The last thing we want to do is be tripping over each other as we are doing this humanitarian assistance,'' he said.
Haitian first lady Elisabeth Préval acknowledged the problems -- and the powerlessness of the Haitian government -- but said increased cooperation was paramount.
``I am not worried today,'' she said. ``But if the relief is not provided soon enough to a population in despair, that might open the door to some violence''.
With thousands of bodies being shoveled into mass graves, there is no exact tally of the casualty count.
Citing Haitian government figures, the European Commission estimates the number of dead at 200,000 with 1.5 million left homeless. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellrive has said more than 70,000 bodies have been recovered.
While rescue workers defied odds by pulling survivors out of the rubble Tuesday, aid agencies rushed to assist the injured and hungry.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the U.N. food agency distributed rations for nearly 200,000 people -- a small percentage of the three million to 3.5 million the U.N. says have been affected.
Ban said the U.N. goal is to increase the number of people receiving food to one million this week and at least two million in the following two weeks.
``The situation is overwhelming,'' he told reporters.
With the Port-au-Prince seaport in ruins, Miami-based Sante Shipping Lines said it expected to unload 1,200 tons of aid Tuesday at the northern port of Cap Haitien. The company hopes to dock two more cargo ships in secondary ports by the end of the month.
Badly damaged hospitals also are starting to treat the injured with help from international medical teams.
The University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine said it would be moving its field hospital in Port-au-Prince to a larger, 300-bed tent by Wednesday. The new site will allow doctors to perform surgeries on proper operating tables, and have access to X-ray and ultrasound machines.
``I saw more death in my first day there than I have in 35 years at Jackson,'' said Dr. Barth Green, the University of Miami neurosurgeon who was instrumental to the effort.
Still, tens of thousands of people are sleeping on the streets or in makeshift camps. And relief workers fear visiting some parts of the city because of looting and violence by desperate survivors.
As six U.S. Navy helicopters dropped 100 troops on the lawn of Haiti's flattened presidential palace Tuesday, quake victims received them with cheers, jamming the fence of the palace grounds to watch.
``We are happy that they are coming, because we have so many problems,'' said Fede Felissaint, a hairdresser.
More reinforcements are due to follow after the U.N. said it would add 3,500 police and soldiers to help control outbursts of looting and violence that have slowed distribution of supplies.
The U.N. Security Council approved adding 2,000 troops to the 7,000 military peacekeepers already in the country, as well as 1,500 more police to the 2,100-strong international force.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said the extra soldiers will provide security escorts for humanitarian convoys and supplement a reserve force in case of widespread unrest.
Arrival of the troops and police depends on the pace of offers from the 191 other U.N. member states.
Le Roy said the Dominican Republic already has offered to send an 800-strong battalion to secure the road from Port-au-Prince to the Dominican border, and they could arrive this week.
For those awaiting humanitarian and security assistance, troop reinforcements cannot arrive soon enough.
Just four blocks from the U.S. troops landing at the palace, hundreds of looters were rampaging through downtown.
``That is how it is. There is nothing we can do,'' said Haitian police Officer Arina Bence, who was trying to keep civilians out of the looting zone for their own safety.
People in one hillside Port-au-Prince district blocked off access to their street with cars and asked young local men to patrol for looters.
``We never count on the government here,'' said Tatony Vieux, 29. ``Never''.
As of Tuesday afternoon, only 12 of the 4,000 escaped prisoners from the national penitentiary had been arrested, authorities said.
In Port-au-Prince's sprawling Cite Soleil slum, influential gang leaders who escaped from a heavily damaged prison after the earthquake were taking advantage of a void left by police and peacekeepers focused on disaster relief, the Associated Press reported.
``If you don't kill the criminals, they will all come back,'' a Haitian police officer shouted over a loudspeaker to residents, the AP reported.
The residents of Cite Soleil could not count on security forces for help.
The Brazilian peacekeeping unit assigned to Cite Soleil lost 18 of its 145 soldiers in the earthquake, including 10 who died when a nearby U.N. post collapsed -- leaving weapons and equipment open to looting.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission also lost its chief, deputy chief and acting police commander, leaving a group largely made up of inexperienced officers.
While the U.S. focuses on Port-au-Prince, Canada will take over the coordination of delivering aid to Jacmel and Leogane. Both cities have suffered more than 50 percent loss of their housing, according to Haitian government officials.
As U.S. and Haitian officials and relief agencies struggled to bring help to Haiti, Florida's Department of Emergency Operations said the agency, working with the state's Department of Children & Families and the Department of Health, has helped bring 4,526 citizens evacuated from the island.
David Halstead, interim director, said 103 evacuees were taken to area hospitals with serious injuries. Most were flown into Homestead Air Reserve Base and an air base in Sanford, Fla.
After flying empty passenger planes on cargo runs in and out of Port-au-Prince since the quake, American Airlines on Tuesday flew 179 civilians from Haiti to Sanford, northeast of Orlando, American spokeswoman Martha Pantin said Tuesday. The Defense Department chartered the plane and the State Department determined which civilians should get seats on the flight, Pantin said.
The flight marked the first time since the Jan. 12 quake that Washington allowed American to fly large numbers of people out on one of its flights. On Monday, the State Department also allowed Spirit Airlines to take a few dozen college students on a plane out of Port-au-Prince.
Both carriers say they're eager to resume service from Haiti to South Florida, and are just waiting for Washington to approve the Port-au-Prince airport for regular commercial flights.
This report was supplemented with material from The Associated Press. Miami Herald staff writers Charles, Clark, Daniel, Ovalle and Robles contributed to this report from Haiti. Herald staff writers Elinor Brecher, Daniel Chang, Douglas Hanks, Hannah Sampson, Jim Wyss and Luisa Yanez reported from Miami
The Miami Herald
