By PAUL HAVEN and MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Writers Paul Haven And Michelle Faul, Associated Press Writers
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11 mins ago
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A powerful new earthquake struck
Haiti
on Wednesday, shaking rubble from damaged buildings and sending
screaming people running into the streets only eight days after the
country's capital was devastated by an apocalyptic quake.
The
magnitude-6.1 temblor was the largest aftershock yet to the Jan. 12
quake. The extent of additional damage or injuries was not immediately
clear.
Wails of terror rose from frightened
survivors as the earth shuddered at 6:03 a.m. U.S. soldiers and tent
city refugees alike raced for open ground, and clouds of dust rose in
the capital.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 35 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of
Port-au-Prince and 6.2 miles (9.9 kilometers) below the surface.
"It kind of felt like standing on a board on top of a ball," said U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Steven Payne. The 27-year-old from
Jolo, West Virginia was preparing to hand out food to refugees in a tent camp of 25,000 quake victims when the aftershock hit.
Last
week's magnitude-7 quake killed an estimated 200,000 people in Haiti,
left 250,000 injured and made 1.5 million homeless, according to the
European Union Commission.
The new shake
prompted Anold Fleurigene, 28, to grab his wife and three children and
head to the city bus station. His house was destroyed in the first
quake and his sister and brother killed.
"I've seen the situation here, and I want to get out," he said.
A massive international aid effort has been struggling with logistical problems, and many
Haitians are still desperate for food and water.
Still,
search-and-rescue teams have emerged from the ruins with some
improbable success stories — including the rescue of 69-year-old ardent
Roman Catholic who said she prayed constantly during her week under the
rubble.
Ena Zizi had been at a church meeting
at the residence of Haiti's Roman Catholic archbishop when the Jan. 12
quake struck, trapping her in debris. On Tuesday, she was rescued by a
Mexican disaster team.
Zizi said after the
quake, she spoke back and forth with a vicar who also was trapped. But
he fell silent after a few days, and she spent the rest of the time
praying and waiting.
"I talked only to my boss, God," she said. "I didn't need any more humans."
Doctors who examined Zizi on Tuesday said she was dehydrated and had a dislocated hip and a broken leg.
Elsewhere
in the capital, two women were pulled from a destroyed university
building. And near midnight Tuesday, a smiling and singing 26-year-old
Lozama Hotteline was carried to safety from a collapsed store in the
Petionville neighborhood by the French aid group Rescuers
Without Borders.
Crews at the cathedral recovered the body of the archbishop, Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, who was killed in the Jan. 12 quake.
Authorities
said close to 100 people had been pulled from wrecked buildings by
international search-and-rescue teams. Efforts continued, with dozens
of teams hunting through Port-au-Prince's crumbled homes and buildings
for signs of life.
But the good news was
overshadowed by the frustrating fact that the world still can't get
enough food and water to the hungry and thirsty.
"We need so much. Food, clothes, we need everything. I don't
know whose responsibility it is, but they need to give us something
soon," said Sophia Eltime, a 29-year-old mother of two who has been
living under a bedsheet with seven members of her extended family.
The World Food Program said more than 250,000 ready-to-eat food
rations had been distributed in Haiti by Tuesday, reaching only a
fraction of the 3 million people thought to be in desperate need.
The WFP said it needs to deliver 100 million ready-to-eat
rations in the next 30 days, but it only had 16 million meals in the
pipeline.
Even as U.S. troops landed in Seahawk helicopters Tuesday on the manicured lawn of the ruined
National Palace, the colossal efforts to help
Haiti
were proving inadequate because of the scale of the disaster.
Expectations exceeded what money, will and military might have been
able to achieve.
So far, international relief efforts have been unorganized, disjointed and insufficient to satisfy the great need.
Doctors Without Borders
says a plane carrying urgently needed surgical equipment and drugs has
been turned away five times, even though the agency received advance
authorization to land.
A statement from Partners in Health, co-founded by the deputy U.N. envoy to Haiti,
Dr. Paul Farmer, said the group's medical director estimated 20,000 people are dying each day who could be saved by surgery.
"TENS OF THOUSANDS OF EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS NEED EMERGENCY SURGICAL
CARE NOW!!!!!" the group said in the statement. It did not describe the
basis for that estimate.
The reasons are varied:
• Both national and international authorities suffered great
losses in the quake, taking out many of the leaders best suited to
organize a response.
• Woefully inadequate infrastructure and a near-complete
failure in telephone and Internet communications have complicated
efforts to reach millions of people forced from their homes.
• Fears of looting and violence have kept aid groups and governments from moving as quickly as they would like.
• Pre-existing poverty and malnutrition put some at risk even before the quake hit.
Governments have pledged nearly $1 billion in aid, and thousands
of tons of food and medical supplies have been shipped. But much
remains trapped in warehouses, or diverted to the neighboring
Dominican Republic. Port-au-Prince's nonfunctioning seaport and many impassable roads complicate efforts to get aid to the people.
Aid is being turned back from the single-runway airport, where the
U.S. military has been criticized by some of poorly prioritizing flights. The
U.S. Air Force said it had raised the facility's daily capacity from 30 flights before the quake to 180 on Tuesday.
About 2,200 U.S. Marines established a beachhead west of
Port-au-Prince
on Tuesday to help speed aid delivery, in addition to 9,000 Army
soldiers already on the ground. Lt. Cmdr. Walter Matthews, a U.S.
military spokesman, said helicopters were ferrying aid from the airport
into Port-au-Prince and the nearby town of
Jacmel as fast as they could.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the military will send a
port-clearing ship with cranes aboard to Port-au-Prince to remove
debris that is preventing many larger aid ships from docking.
The U.N. was sending in reinforcements as well: The
Security Council voted Tuesday to add 2,000 peacekeepers to the 7,000 already in
Haiti, and 1,500 more police to the 2,100-strong international force.
"The floodgates for aid are starting to open," Matthews said at
the airport. "In the first few days, you're limited by manpower, but
we're starting to bring people in."
The WFP's Alain Jaffre said the U.N. agency hoped to help 100,000 people by Wednesday.
Hanging over the entire effort was an overwhelming fear among relief officials that
Haitians' desperation would boil over into violence.
"We've very concerned about the level of security we need around
our people when we're doing distributions," said Graham Tardif, who
heads disaster-relief efforts for the
charity World Vision. The U.N., the U.S. government and other organizations have echoed such fears.
Occasionally, those fears have been borne out. Looters rampaged through
part of downtown Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, just four blocks from where
U.S. troops landed at the presidential palace. Hundreds of looters
fought over bolts of cloth and other goods with broken bottles and
clubs.
USGS geophysicist Bruce Pressgrave said nobody knows if a still-stronger aftershock is possible.
"Aftershocks sometimes die out very quickly," he said. "In other
cases they can go on for weeks, or if we're really unlucky it could go
on for months" as the earth adjusts to the new stresses caused by the
initial quake.
Play Video
AP
– Raw Video: First pics following Haiti aftershock
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AP – Earthquake survivor Hotteline Lozama, 26, shakes hands with a rescuer as she was pulled out from the …
