PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A strong aftershock struck near the Haitian capital on Wednesday morning, shaking buildings and setting off screams of terror from the thousands of residents who have been camped outside since last week’s powerful earthquake.þþThe aftershock, which had a magnitude 6.1, came around 6 a.m. about 35 miles west of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and was the most powerful to hit Haiti since the initial earthquake on Jan. 12. It lasted several seconds, and the ground continued to move for at least a minute after — a calm swaying as if the capital were a ship in gentle swells. þþIn downtown Port-Au-Prince near the national palace, there did not appear to be any new damage, though fear was great that this would knock down the many damaged buildings.þþThe latest temblor came a day after American military helicopters landed in the capital, signs of the growing international relief operation here. But the troops’ presence underscored the rising complaints that the Haitian government had all but disappeared in the week since a huge earthquake struck.þþHaiti’s long history of foreign intervention, including an American occupation, normally makes the influx of foreigners a delicate issue.þþBut with the government of President René Préval largely out of public view and the needs so huge, many Haitians are shunting aside their concerns about sovereignty and welcoming anybody willing to help — in camouflage or not.þþ“It is not ideal to have a foreign army here, but look at the situation,” said Énide Edoword, 24, a waitress who was standing Tuesday in a camp of displaced people. “We are living amid filth and hunger and thirst after a catastrophe.”þþWhen Mr. Préval asked religious and business leaders at a meeting on Saturday whether they supported the intervention of the United States Marines, the response came with a caveat.þþ“They said, ‘Yes — as long as it’s temporary,’ ” said Bishop Jean-Zache Duracin of Haiti’s Episcopal Church, who attended the meeting. “We have no choice because the government has collapsed.” þþAt the international airport, where the United States Air Force now controls incoming and departing planes, Haitian officials are on hand and insist that it is still theirs, even if it more resembles a military base.þþ“We are like a country whose capital has been hit by two atomic bombs,” said Patrick Elie, a presidential adviser and former defense minister.þþ“We are obviously in a moment of disarray, if not pain, and we have to regroup,” he added. “But let no one point a finger and say, ‘Where is the state?’ People who say that don’t understand the extent of the damage.”þþBut many were still pointing fingers.þþ“We have a vacuum of government,” asserted Michèle Pierre-Louis, who had been Mr. Préval’s prime minister until she was ousted a few months ago. “The big question is, Who’s in charge? We don’t feel as though there is someone organizing all this.”þþThe aftershock on Wednesday did not appear to cause much further damage, but it brought a new wave of fear to a city that had already been traumatized.þþJean Michel Petithomme, 45, stood in the middle of Capois Street near downtown pointing to the cracks on his masonry home above an abandoned store-front pharmacy. He has not stayed in the house since the Jan. 12 earthquake but returns daily to see if still stands, he said. þþ“That was one of the biggest aftershocks since the earthquake, but there have been many like it” he said. “Those cracks are wider. I thought it would fall at last, but it is still there.”þþJosette Lilas, a 25-year-old beautician, said she felt as if her heart had leaped into her throat when the aftershock struck Wednesday morning.þþ“I thought this time, my good God, it was the end of the world,” Ms. Lilas said. She added that had grown accustomed to sleeping in the street, bathing by the curb, hiding her disheveled hair beneath a shocking pink scarf. Despite the latest jolt, she said, the worst was behind her. þþ“I screamed and screamed,” she said. “Then I realized it was over. I was still alive. Hallelujah.”þþMr. Préval, an aloof leader even in the best of times, huddled with advisers on Tuesday at a compact police station that has become the government’s de-facto headquarters. Aides described him as being as traumatized by the recent events as every other Haitian but still fully engaged in the nation’s recovery. þþThey said he and his ministers were engaged in a furious effort to organize all the outside aid, find refuge for the hundreds of thousands of people living in the streets and bury bodies, thousands and thousands of which have been collected and put in mass graves so far as of Tuesday morning. (There is still no widely accepted death toll.)þþThey said the president would soon address the nation for the first time since the quake struck on Jan. 12. þþBut the international effort has far outpaced anything Haiti could manage: supply flights from around the world continued to arrive in numbers, though aid groups complained of being turned away.þþIn New York, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said that the United Nations’ food agency had distributed rations for 200,000 people so far, and other officials said the aim was to quickly supply 4.2 million rations of high-nutrition food for children. þþMr. Ban said the agency was aiming to feed one million people by the end of this week and two million by the end of next week — though three million or more people are estimated to need food. þþIn Port-au-Prince, the capital, foreign rescue teams scoured buildings for survivors under the rubble. A joint New York City Police-Fire rescue team on Tuesday pulled out two children from the rubble of a collapsed building in the capital, The Associated Press reported. A police spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said that the 8-year-old boy and the 10-year-old girl were taken to an Israeli tent hospital for treatment, The A.P. reported. Foreign doctors provided medical care and carried out scores of life-saving amputations.þþBut the demand for medical care far outstripped the supply of doctors. Debarati Guha-Sapir, a professor of epidemiology and the director of the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the University of Louvain in Belgium, said that deaths in large earthquakes generally declined after the first day or two. þþ“Haiti, I think, is going to be a little different,” she said. “They will die simply because there is no care. People will die of wounds. They will die of lack of surgical care. They will die of simple trauma that in almost any other country would not lead to death.”þþElisabeth Delatour Préval, Haiti’s first lady, insisted that the country’s sovereignty remained intact, although she acknowledged that there was widespread concern among the population about whether the government was functioning, especially given the heavy damage sustained by the palace and other highly visible government buildings. þþ“Visually, people can’t see what they used to recognize as the symbols of the state,” she said in an interview. “That has generated some kind of panic. ‘Are they there or aren’t they there?’ ”þþThe American military, which began patrolling in Humvees up and down Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the capital’s main commercial strip, took pains to reassure Haitians that the United States was in the country in a support role.þþMeanwhile, 125 Marines arrived in helicopters in the damaged farming town of Léogâne, south of the capital, delivering cases of water and food.þþCol. Gregory Kane of the United States Army told reporters at the Port-au-Prince airport that the Haitian government remained in charge. He said that United States forces were on the ground only to assist with the relief efforts.þþ“There have been some reports and news stories out there that the U.S. is invading Haiti,” Colonel Kane said. “We’re not invading Haiti. That’s ludicrous. This is humanitarian relief.”þþMost Haitians seemed to see it that way, despite deep historic concerns about American troops in particular. þþPresident Woodrow Wilson sent American Marines to Haiti in 1915 to restore public order after six different leaders ruled the country in quick succession, each killed or forced into exile. Opposition was intense, but it would be nearly two decades before the Marines would leave, in 1934.þþWhen President Bill Clinton ordered troops into the country in 1994 to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted as president by a group of former soldiers, Haitian critics raised that earlier intervention.þþA decade later, Mr. Aristide was forced out of office, and he accused the United States of orchestrating his ouster.þþBut on Tuesday, as American troops in combat fatigues bounded out of the helicopters and moved across the palace grounds, hundreds of Haitians who had gathered at the white-and-green palace gates erupted in cheers and called out in Creole for food and water.þþ“We can’t do it without them,” said Ms. Pierre-Louis, the former prime minister. “This country has been mismanaged for the last 50 years, and if we can’t run the country well in normal times how can we do it now?”þþOther troops are on the way. The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday unanimously approved sending 3,500 more police officers and peacekeeping troops to Haiti to maintain public order and to guard deliveries as the aid effort gathers steam.þþThe forces will augment the roughly 9,000 United Nations troops already here.þþSo far, violence has been scattered in Port-au-Prince. But senior United Nations officials said it might boil over at any moment as the difficulties of living without water, food and shelter mounted.þþMrs. Préval said that she and the president were about to enter their private residence when the earthquake struck. They stepped back from the home, she said, and it collapsed before them. For hours, rumors circulated around the capital that she had been killed. þþShe said that Mr. Préval quickly jumped onto the back of a motorcycle taxi to tour hospitals and damaged areas with top aides, and that he had been in nonstop emergency meetings ever since. Government ministers, she added, initially held meetings in the yard of the president’s home.þ
Source: NY Times
