HAITI: Displaced earthquake victims crowd camps in Port-au-Prince

Record ID: 346252

  • Title: HAITI: Displaced earthquake victims crowd camps in Port-au-Prince
  • Date: 20th January 2010
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF PEOPLE PREPARING LAND FOR MORE TENTS
  • Embargoed: 4th February 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Haiti
  • Country: Haiti
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
  • Reuters ID: LVAA8OIESNZJDAFPDM5DTOKG37AO
  • Story Text: One week after a devastating 7.0 earthquake, thousands of displaced earthquake victims gather in camps in Port-au-Prince and say they are still in desperate need of aid.
    One week after a 7.0 earthquake devastated the Haitian capital thousands of displaced people remained in crowded camps on Tuesday (January 19) hoping for much needed aid.
    At the Bermane camp located near the airport in Port-au-Prince, a sea of makeshift tents was the only shelter for thousands of earthquake victims whose homes were destroyed last Tuesday (January 12).
    The pace of food and medical aid deliveries picked up in earthquake-shattered Haiti, providing some hope to the now-desperate survivors, but many at the camp were still in need of basic necessitates.
    "We don't have money, we don't have water, we have nothing," said one displaced woman.
    U.S. troops protected distribution of aid on Monday (January 18), which has begun arriving more regularly at the U.S.-run airfield and airdropped of thousands of packets of food and water to those waiting in make-shift refugee camps.
    "I have many problems, I can't find anything to eat, I don't have a house, I don't have clothes, I don't have anything," said Mwenlage Sanianyen.
    In a bid to accelerate the arrival of humanitarian aid and stem looting and violence, the U.N. Security Council unanimously agreed to temporarily add 2,000 U.N. troops and 1,500 police to the 9,000-member peacekeeping mission in Haiti.
    Haitian officials say the death toll from the magnitude 7 earthquake that destroyed much of the capital on Jan. 12 was likely to be between 100,000 and 200,000.
    The World Food Program (WFP) said 270,000 people had received emergency food assistance by Monday night.
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