Haitian: ‘We live like dogs’

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — With 150,000 bodies already in mass graves, international teams, grieving families, sympathetic neighbors and sometimes even strangers were pulling at the rubble Monday with tools or bare hands in countless corners of the devastated capital. Thirteen days after the killer magnitude-7.0 earthquake, they were desperate to recover some of the thousands of Port-au-Prince’s lost dead — to close each tragic circle, to lay loved ones in the earth to rest in peace.

For the living — the homeless spread across empty lots, parks and plazas in the hundreds of thousands — there was little rest as aid agencies struggled to fill their needs for food and water, and to get them tents to shelter their families against the burning tropical sun.

In front of the wrecked National Palace, people’s desperation boiled over. Uruguayan U.N. soldiers had to fire pepper spray into the air to try to disperse thousands jostling for food.

The overwhelmed soldiers finally retreated, and young men rushed forward to grab the bags of pinto beans and rice, emblazoned with the U.S. flag, pushing aside others — including a pregnant woman who collapsed and was trampled. Thousands were left without food.

In the surrounding Champs de Mars plaza, a sea of homeless covered the open ground, many with nothing more than a plastic sheet to protect them from sun and rain.

“We live like dogs,” said Espiegle Amilcar, 34. “We’re sleeping, eating and going to the bathroom in the same place.”

The global agency supplying tents said it already had 10,000 stored in Haiti and at least 30,000 more would be arriving. But, said the International Organization for Migration, “the supply is unlikely to address the extensive shelter needs.”

The organization had estimated 100,000 family-sized tents were needed. But the U.N. says up to 1 million people require shelter, and Haitian President Rene Preval issued an urgent appeal Monday for 200,000 tents and for the aircraft carrying them to be given urgent landing priority at Port-au-Prince airport.

Meanwhile, the Haitian government and international groups were preparing a more substantial tent city on Port-au-Prince’s outskirts.

In Montreal on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and officials of more than two dozen other donor nations and international organizations met to assess the progress of the relief effort.

The Haitian government asked the international community to provide $3 billion for Haiti’s reconstruction, the toruism minister said. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told the conference his impoverished nation lost 60 percent of its gross domestic product in the quake, the economic activity centered on Port-au-Prince.

Returning from Haiti, International Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally said in Geneva that a new Port-au-Prince must be planned. “It’s going to require, minimum, a generation,” he said, adding that the need for heavy equipment to tear down damaged buildings was growing.