Trapped Haitian girl dies despite rescue effort

PORT-AU-PRINCE - Trapped beneath the crumbled remains of her home, the cries of the 9-year-old girl could be heard begging for rescue as neighbors clawed at sand and debris with their bare hands.

It had been two days since the earthquake collapsed the cinder block home, trapping Haryssa Keem Clerge inside. Friends and neighbors braved aftershocks to climb over the rubble, one of hundreds of toppled structures teetering on the side of a ravine.

In a city full of people desperately waiting for more help than neighbors can muster, it never came for Haryssa. Hours after her screams renewed rescuers' hopes yesterday, the child's lifeless body was finally pulled from the mass of concrete and twisted metal. Wrapped in a green bath towel, it was placed inside a loose desk drawer. With nowhere to take it, the body was then left on the hood of a battered Isuzu Trooper.

"There are no police, no anybody," said the child's despairing godmother, Kettely Clerge. Neighbors had to hold her back as she walked toward the building's winding, partially collapsed stairway, wailing: "I want to see her!" A day earlier, the little girl's mother, Lauranie Jean, was pulled from the rubble of the same house. She lay moaning inside a tent yesterday as volunteers rubbed ointment into open wounds on her sides.

The family has now taken refuge in a dirt playground - one of hundreds of open spaces across Port-au-Prince that people are filling each night to try to avoid the risk of aftershocks.

Haitians living in the growing tent cities say they do not expect help anytime soon.

"People are waiting for someone to take care of them," said Michel Reau, 27, who brought his wife and infant child to the park after their home collapsed. "We are out of food. We are out of water."

A neighbor, Bellefleur Jean Heber, said nobody expected help from authorities. "Haiti is an abandoned country," he said. "People are relying on themselves."