HAITIANS DESPERATE FOR SUPPLIES, RESCUES CONTINUES (455 hits)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Drumbeats called the faithful to a Sunday Mass behind mounds of rubble and amid the few remaining walls of Port-au-Prince’s destroyed Roman Catholic cathedral to listen to a sermon in a scene resembling the Apocalypse.

“Why give thanks to God? Because we are here,” said the Rev. Eric Toussaint. “We say ‘Thank you God.’ What happened is the will of God. We are in the hands of God now.”

As Toussaint preached to a small crowd of survivors amid the ruins, rescuers across the capital were still struggling to pull an increasingly slim number of living from collapsed buildings amid the stench of death. Hundreds of thousands waited for food and water to finally reach them five days after Tuesday’s magnitude-7.0 earthquake.

RELATED: OPINION: The Haitian Earthquake Is The World’s Katrina

Frustration grew over efforts to get aid through the small, damaged and clogged airport that has been taken over by U.S. military controllers, and to get it from the airport into town.

Doctors Without Borders said Sunday that a cargo plane carrying a field hospital was denied permission to land at the airport and had to be rerouted through the Dominican Republic — creating a 24-hour delay in setting up a crucial field hospital.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Sunday, January 17th 2010 at 2:12PM
You can also click here to view all posts by this author...