Powerful aftershock shakes Haitians anew

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A frightening new aftershock yesterday forced more earthquake survivors to live on the capital's streets or sent them fleeing to perhaps even worse conditions in the countryside.

A flotilla of rescue vessels, meanwhile, led by the U.S. hospital ship Comfort, converged on the capital. They are helping fill gaps in still-lagging global efforts to bring water, food, and medical help to hundreds of thousands of people who are surviving in makeshift tents or simply on blankets or plastic sheets under the tropical sun.

The strongest tremor since Haiti's cataclysmic Jan. 12 earthquake struck at 6:03 a.m., just before sunrise while many were still sleeping. From the teeming plaza near the collapsed presidential palace to a hillside tent city, the 5.9-magnitude aftershock lasted only seconds but panicked Haitians.

"Jesus!" they cried as rubble tumbled and dust rose anew from government buildings around the plaza. Parents gathered up children and ran.

Up in the hills, where U.S. troops were helping thousands of homeless, people bolted screaming from their tents. Jajoute Ricardo, 24, came running from his house, fearing its collapse.

"Nobody will go to their house now," he said, as he sought a tent of his own. "It is chaos, for real."

A slow vibration intensified into side-to-side shaking that lasted about eight seconds - compared with last week's far stronger initial quake that seemed to go on for 30 seconds.

Throngs again sought out small, ramshackle "tap-tap" buses to take them away from the city. On Port-au-Prince's beaches, more than 20,000 people looked for boats to carry them down the coast, the local Signal FM radio reported.

But the desperation may actually be deeper outside the capital, closer to last week's quake epicenter.

"We're waiting for food, for water, for anything," Emmanuel Doris-Cherie, 32, said in Leogane, 25 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince. Homeless in Leogane lived under sheets draped across tree branches, and the damaged hospital "lacks everything," Red Cross surgeon Hassan Nasreddine said.

Hundreds of Canadian soldiers and sailors were deploying to that town and to Jacmel on the south coast to support relief efforts, and the Haitian government sent a plane and an overland team to assess needs in Petit-Goave, a seaside town 10 miles farther west from Leogane that was the epicenter of yesterday's aftershock.

President Obama said yesterday in an interview with ABC News that the United States did not want its burgeoning relief effort to appear as if it was taking over Haiti. He said that the Haitian government had been destroyed and that the United States wanted to help rebuild it.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that Obama and his wife, Michelle, had donated $15,000 from their personal bank account to help quake victims.

The Obamas sent a check yesterday to the relief effort led by former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Also yesterday, a senior official at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba said that the United States had begun preparing tents there for Haitians in case of a mass exodus.

About 100 tents, each capable of holding 10 people, have been erected, and authorities have more than 1,000 more on hand in case waves of Haitians leave their homeland and are intercepted at sea, Navy Rear Adm. Thomas Copeman said.

The death toll has been estimated at 200,000, according to Haitian government figures relayed by the European Commission, with 80,000 buried in mass graves. The commission raised its estimate of homeless to two million, from 1.5 million, and said that 250,000 people needed urgent aid.

With search dogs and detection gear, U.S. and other rescue teams worked into last night in hopes of finding buried survivors. But hopes were dimming.

"It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and each day the needles are disappearing," said Steven Chin of the Los Angeles County rescue team.

One rescue was reported. The International Medical Corps said that it was caring for a 5-year-old boy found by relatives in quake ruins yesterday.

Many badly injured Haitians still awaited lifesaving surgery.

"It is like working in a war situation," said Rosa Crestani of Doctors Without Borders at the Choscal Hospital in the Cite Soleil area of Port-au-Prince. "We don't have any morphine to manage pain for our patients."

The damaged hospitals and emergency medical centers set up in Port-au-Prince needed surgeons, fuel for generators, oxygen, and countless other kinds of medical supplies, aid groups said.

Dr. Evan Lyon, of the U.S.-based Partners in Health, messaged from the central University Hospital that the facility was within 24 hours of running out of key supplies.

Troops of the 82d Airborne Division were providing security at the hospital. A helicopter landing pad was designated nearby for airlifting the most critical patients to the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort.

The great white ship, 894 feet long, with a medical staff of 550, was anchored in Port-au-Prince harbor and had taken aboard its first two surgical patients by helicopter late Tuesday even as it was steaming in.

It joined the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and other U.S. warships offshore, along with the French landing craft Francis Garnier, which carried a medical team, hundreds of tents, and other aid.

The seaborne rescue fleet will soon be reinforced by the Spanish ship Castilla, with 50 doctors and 450 troops, and by three other U.S.-based Navy vessels diverted from a scheduled Middle East mission. Canadian warships were already in Haitian waters, and an Italian aircraft carrier, the Cavour, also will join the flotilla with medical teams and engineers.

U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said at U.N. headquarters in New York that it was believed that three million people were affected, with two million of those needing food for at least six months.

Concerns persisted that looting and violence that flared up in pockets in recent days could spread. The European Commission's report described the security situation as "deteriorating."

But U.S. troops - about 11,500 soldiers, Marines, and sailors onshore and offshore as of yesterday and expected to total 16,000 by the weekend - could be seen ratcheting up control over parts of the city. The United Nations was adding 2,000 peacekeepers to the 7,000 already in Haiti, and 1,500 more police to the 2,100-member international force.

That plan suffered a setback when Haiti - with historically tense relations with neighboring Dominican Republic - rejected a Dominican offer of an 800-strong battalion, according to a Western diplomat at the United Nations, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Taxpayers who make donations for Haitian earthquake victims would be able to write off this charitable deduction when they file their 2009 taxes this spring, under a bill passed by the House yesterday.

Under current law, donors would have to wait until they file their 2010 returns next year to take the deductions. But the newly advanced bill would allow donations made by the end of February to be deducted from 2009 returns.

The bill passed on a voice vote with no opposition. Quick Senate action is expected. A similar law was enacted in 2005 for donations to victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami that struck in December 2004.

"It's a simple gesture,

but it will encourage giving in this challenging economy," said Rep. Earl Blumenauer

(D., Ore.).

- Associated PressEndText

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