Port-au-Prince quake death toll tops 150,000
Communications minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue told reporters that the figure is based on a body count in the capital and outlying areas by CNE, a state company that has been collecting corpses and burying them in a mass grave north of Port-au-Prince.
It does not include other affected cities such as Jacmel, where thousands are believed dead, nor does it account for bodies burned by relatives.
Reports have varied on how many are known to have died, and the United Nations stuck with its previous total of 111,481 bodies recovered despite the higher number from Haitian officials. All told, authorities estimate 200,000 people were killed by the magnitude-7.0 quake, according to Haitian government figures cited by the European Commission.
“Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble – 200,000, 300,000?” Lassegue said yesterday. “Who knows the overall death toll?”
Experts say chances are slim that more survivors will be found in that debris, although rescuers tunnelled through the wreckage of a fruit and vegetable shop on Saturday to extract a man trapped there for 11 days.
Wismond Exantus, 24, said he survived by diving under a desk during the quake and later consuming cola, beer and cookies in the cramped space. He passed the time praying, reciting psalms and sleeping while waiting for rescuers.
“I wasn’t afraid because I knew they were searching and would come for me,” he said yesterday while convalescing on a blue cot in a French field hospital tent. Doctors expected him to remain there for a few days.
Haiti’s government has declared an end to searches for living people trapped under debris, and officials are shifting their focus to caring for the thousands of survivors living in squalid, makeshift camps.
UN relief workers said the shift is critical: While deliveries of food, medicine and water have ticked up after initial logjams, the need continues to be overwhelming and doctors fear outbreaks of disease in the camps.
Doctors Without Borders reported some of its medical teams were beginning to see more patients with “infections or complications following basic or amateur attempts at treatment in the early days of the aftermath”.
In the notorious slum of Cite Soleil, the site of some looting and violence since the quake, US and Brazilian soldiers handed out food and water yesterday morning to thousands of men, women and children who lined up at a health centre.
The US soldiers brought 2,000 food rations, 75,000 high-energy biscuits and 9,000 bottles of water, while the Brazilians had eight tons of food in small bags of uncooked beans, salt, sugar and sardines, as well as 15,000 litres of water.
Lunie Marcelin, 57, said her entire family, including six grown children who live with her, survived but they had no money to buy food. The handouts “will help us, but it is not enough”, she said. “We need more.”
As many as 200,000 people have fled Port-au-Prince, a city of two million, according to the US Agency for International Development. About 609,000 people are homeless in the capital’s metro area.
The US Geological Survey has recorded 52 aftershocks of magnitude 4.5 or greater since the quake.
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