Another quake shakes Haiti as survivors defy the deadly odds
Residents poured onto the streets fearing a repeat of the January 12 quake said to have killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people. The US Geological Survey estimated the new tremor at magnitude 6.1.
The epicentre was west of Port-au-Prince, which was razed by last week’s devastating 7.0 quake. Witnesses reported a low vibration and then a thunderous rumbling but there was no sign of significant new damage.
There have been big aftershocks since January 12 but rescuers have kept up their search and have been elated by their success in finding survivors who defied the quake’s deadly odds.
Hoteline Losana, 25, was found in the wreckage of a supermarket late on Tuesday only hours after Anna Zizi, who is about 70, sang as she was carried out of the ruins of Port-au-Prince cathedral. A three-week-old baby girl was dug out of rubble in the city of Jacmel.
Losana was said to be “conscious and in good form” by Thiery Cerdan of the French group Rescuers Without Borders, which carried out the nine hour operation with Haitian firemen and American experts.
She had been in an apartment over a supermarket when the quake struck on January 12. Rescuers said she had no food or water, could barely move, and owed her survival to the position in which she was stuck.
“We pulled someone out seven days after an earthquake, that is quite extraordinary,” said Bruno Besson, another member of the French team.
Hours earlier, Mexican firefighters rescued Zizi from under the ruins of the Roman Catholic cathedral.
“It seems rescuers were communicating with her and managing to get water to her through a tube. She was singing when she emerged,” said Sarah Wilson, of British charity Christian Aid.
Some of the rescuers were so overcome that they started crying.
Baby Elisabeth was found alive in a house in Jacmel in southern Haiti, again after surviving for a week without food, French radio reported yesterday.
French rescuers found the 23-day-old girl in a hollow beneath the ruins after spending five hours trying to get through to her, France Inter station said, adding she was mainly unhurt and had been taken to an American field hospital.
The rescue team found the baby in the same bed where she was napping when the earthquake struck. The bed had fallen to the ground floor, but the baby was not even injured.
A search and rescue team was demolishing the remains of the home of the mother, Michelene Joassaint, believing that there was no chance that her baby could be alive.
“It was the mercy of God,” said Ms Joassaint, 22 years old, breastfeeding her daughter on a makeshift hospital bed next to the heavily damaged city hospital. Ms Joassaint was staying in a homeless camp set up on a soccer field when she learned the news. “I cried and then ran to the baby,” she said.
“This wasn’t the way Jesus wanted the baby to die,” said Michelet Joassaint, 47, the baby’s grandfather, a fisherman who was at sea at the time of the earthquake. “Everybody knew the baby was dead, except the Lord.”
Anna Zizi said she was “all right, sort of” after being pulled from the wreckage of the main Roman Catholic Cathedral in Port-au-Prince.
She said her faith as a Roman Catholic helped her through the ordeal.
“I talked only to my boss – God,” she said. “And I didn’t need any more humans.”
Doctors said she was dehydrated, had a dislocated hip and a broken leg.
The UN said that 121 people had now been rescued by international teams in the past week and that there were still hopes of finding more.
But Major General Daniel Allyn, deputy commander of the military operation in Haiti, said US forces would soon switch the focus of the operation to recovering bodies rather than looking for survivors.
The Haitian government gave a latest toll of 75,000 dead, with another 250,000 injured and more than a million left homeless.
US troops fanned out across the capital, where the pace of the relief operation has heightened street tensions.
Camped out under makeshift tents among the rubble, survivors faced a desperate hunt for food and water. For many looting is the only way.
“Look, when you are hungry and poor, nobody helps, you have to steal,” a defiant young man named Vincent said, as people plunged into the ruins of a flattened supermarket.
On Tuesday, US paratroopers secured the ruined presidential palace, which is now surrounded by a squalid refugee camp. About 100 marched to Port-au-Prince’s general hospital.
US Marines also landed southwest of Port-au-Prince to link up with UN peacekeepers before more troops and equipment arrives.
State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said there were 12,000 troops in or around Haiti, with about 2,200 Marines and sailors also expected to take part in the relief operation.
The UN Security Council voted to send 3,500 extra UN troops and police to Haiti to help maintain order and protect aid convoys.
Relatives said that Haitian police killed a 15-year-old girl, Fabienne Cherisma, while firing warning shots over looters in the capital.
Some witnesses in the crowd, including the girl’s father, said a policeman aimed at the girl, while others spoke of a warning shot that went astray.
The US deputy military commander, Allyn, said there were now about 200 daily flights into the capital’s damaged airport, and that two airstrips would be in use by today.
In a huge global effort, more than $1.2 billion (€851m) has been pledged in aid funding for Haiti, according to UN data.
International efforts are also focusing on rebuilding the country, with a major donor conference set for Monday in Montreal.
The UN said security problems were mainly in areas considered “high risk” before the disaster. Some 4,000 criminals escaped from prisons damaged by the earthquake.
“The overall security situation in Port-au-Prince remains stable, with limited, localised violence and looting occurring,” the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
About 12,000 US military personnel are on the ground in Haiti, on ships offshore or en route, including the USNS Comfort hospital ship, which was to arrive in the area yesterday, providing essential capacity for complex surgeries.
Soldiers also spread out to ravaged towns outside the capital, to guard and supply aid distribution there.
In Leogane, the epicentre of the quake, the lack of advanced medical facilities prevented many severely injured from getting life-saving surgeries.
Doctors Without Borders said a cargo plane with 12 tons of medical supplies had been turned away from the congested Port-au- Prince airport three times since Sunday, and five patients died for lack of the supplies it carried.
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