Aid to Haiti scant amid lack of government coordination

PORT-AU-PRINCE - The world still can't get enough food and water to the hungry and thirsty one week after an earthquake shattered Haiti's capital. The airport remains a bottleneck, and the port is a shambles. The Haitian government is invisible, nobody has taken firm charge, and the police have largely given up.

Even as U.S. troops fanned out across the capital Tuesday, the colossal efforts to help Haiti are proving inadequate because of the scale of the disaster and the limitations of the world's governments.

"God has abandoned us! The foreigners have abandoned us!" yelled Micheline Ursulin, tearing at her hair as she rushed past a large pile of decaying bodies. Three of her children died in the quake and her surviving daughter is in the hospital with broken limbs and a serious infection.

Time is running out for those buried in rubble. A Mexican team rescued Ena Zizi, 69, who survived a week in the ruins of the residence of Haiti's Roman Catholic archbishop, who died. Two women were pulled out of a collapsed university building.

But most efforts are focused on getting aid to survivors.

"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, 29, a mother of two who has been living under a bedsheet with seven members of her extended family. She said she had not eaten since Jan. 12.

It is not just Haitians questioning why aid has been so slow since the quake - which left an estimated 200,000 dead, 250,000 injured and 1.5 million homeless. Officials and aid groups such as Doctors Without Borders have complained of skewed priorities and a crippling lack of leadership and coordination.

The reasons are varied: Both national and international authorities suffered great losses, 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 complicate efforts to reach millions forced out of homes turned into rubble; fears of looting and violence keep aid groups and governments from moving as quickly as they'd 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, diverted to the neighboring Dominican Republic, or left hovering in the air. The nonfunctioning seaport and 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 come under flak for poorly prioritizing flights, though the U.S. Air Force said yesterday it had raised the facility's daily capacity from 30 flights before the quake to 180. The military said it will begin using two additional airports in the next two days.

Over the weekend, U.S. officials began dropping food and water by air - in some cases kicking small rations off the back of helicopters directly into heavily populated areas.

The World Food Program said more than 250,000 ready-to-eat rations had been distributed, only a fraction of the 3 million people thought to be in desperate need. So far, no widespread starvation has been reported.

Despite the criticism, some aid officials defended their efforts and said the world is judging them too harshly. "We understand the race against time. Everyone's working 16-hour days," said Steve Matthews, a Haiti-based spokesman for World Vision.