VIDEO: U.N. Aid Arrives in Haiti

By JONATHAN M. KATZ<
The first significant aid delivery has arrived in Haiti to help several hundred thousand people struggling in the wake of tropical storm Hanna.
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GONAIVES, Haiti -- A ship carrying 33 tons of U.N. relief supplies docked in Gonaives on Friday, the first significant aid delivery to tens of thousands of people who have gone with little food or clean water for four days.

Argentine soldiers worked through the night with heavy equipment to drop boulders into a gap that Tropical Storm Hanna tore in the pier, allowing the Tres Rivieres ship to dock, belching white smoke from its stack.

Soldiers with rifles stood guard in the crumbling port while dockworkers offloaded 15 metric tons of relief supplies from the capital of Port-au-Prince. The aid from the U.N.'s World Food Program included bottled water, water-purification tablets, high-energy biscuits, cooking oil and rice.

The soldiers, part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, aimed to distribute the biscuits and water within hours to emergency shelters where 40,000 people were marooned and increasingly desperate.

Hanna's floodwaters inundated more than half the homes in Haiti's fourth-largest city when it struck Monday, and corpses surfacing as floodwaters receded have raised the known death toll from Hanna in Haiti to 137.

But the break in the weather -- there were blue skies over Gonaives on Friday -- is expected to be short. Hurricane Ike, now a Category 3 hurricane, could pass near Haiti this weekend. Even if Ike passes to the north of Haiti, as expected, it's almost certain to dump more rain in Haiti's fertile Artibonite

Valley, whose rivers funnel into Gonaives.

"It's such a moist environment, so rain is almost a no-brainer," said John Cangialosi, a meteorologist at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. However, he added, because the storm's path is hard to predict, "how much rain is tough to say."

And with half of Gonaives under water, even a light rain could be disastrous.

"The soil is completely impregnated with water and there is no way for the rivers to take more water," said Max Cocsi, who directs Belgium's mission in Haiti of Doctors Without Borders. "We don't need a hurricane -- a storm would be enough."

Cocsi, who arrived in Gonaives on Thursday, told The Associated Press that no one knows how many have been killed. The focus now is on reaching the living, not recovering bodies.


A team from the American Red Cross flew over Gonaives
Haiti's government has few resources to help. Rescue convoys have been blocked by floodwaters. U.S. government aid was on its way -- a U.S. plane from Miami on Thursday delivered enough relief supplies for 20,000 people to the capital.

These shipments -- including health kits, plastic sheeting and water jugs -- will be followed by more aid as soon as officials figure out how to get it in, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mari Tolliver said.

"It will be based on where need is greatest," she said. "We're trying every avenue."

All land access into Gonaives was cut by the storm, with bridges collapsed, roads washed out and trees fallen down, U.N. food agency representative Myrta Kaulard said. So the U.N. peacekeeping mission was also hoping that its helicopters could take more U.N. personnel along to begin handing out aid.

The relief group Oxfam said it will provide 500 nonfood item kits and 1,000 5-gallon bottles of drinking water to Gonaives over the weekend.

"Food supplies and water are scarce and the price of the food that's left is rising," said Parnell A. Denis, Oxfam's representative in Gonaives. "The morale of people staying in the shelters is so very low. I am afraid to tell them that another storm is on its way."

At least 102 of the Haitians who died were in the Gonaives area, officials said. Some 250,000 people are affected in the region and 54,000 people are living in shelters across the country, according to government estimates. The storm also killed at least two people in Puerto Rico.

Gonaives -- a collection of concrete buildings, run-down shacks and plazas with dilapidated fountains -- lies in a flat river plain between the ocean and deforested mountains that run with mud even in light rains. Hanna swirled over Haiti for four days, dumping vast amounts of water, blowing down fruit trees and ruining stores of food.

Many houses were torn apart. Families huddled on rooftops, their possessions laid out to dry. Overturned cars were everywhere, and televisions floated in the brown water.

In the capital, Tolliver said $250,000 in relief supplies arrived in Haiti on Thursday, and another $100,000 will be used to buy bedding, kitchen items and other goods for victims.



"The situation in Gonaives is catastrophic," Daniel Rouzier, Haiti chairman of Food for the Poor, wrote in an e-mail. "We, just like the rest of the victims ... have limited mobility. You can't float a boat, drive a truck or fly anything to the victims."
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Associated Press writer Jennifer Kay contibuted to this report from Miami.

Source: AP/BBC/ConnPost