Port Au Prince

Looters tried Thursday tried to ransack properties held by suspected associates of Duvalier, but soldiers sent to patrol the downtown commercial district intercepted the crowds before they could break into any stores. In the hills surrounding Port-au-Prince, occasional gunshots were heard. In some cases, neighborhoods previously untouched by such activity became the scene of taunting mobs seeking revenge against members of the Tontons Macoutes, or bogeymen, Duvalier's personal militia.

Five months after Haiti's devastating earthquake, the emergency response has finally secured a toehold: No one is lacking essential life-preserving services. But real recovery and reconstruction efforts have yet to begin, and there is a significant risk of further disaster. In more than 10 years of emergency relief work, I've never seen camps like those in Port-au-Prince. International standards defining what people are entitled to after a disaster are in no way being met. The Haitian camps are congested beyond imagination, with ramshackle tents standing edge to edge in every square foot of available space.

The United States has donated $25,000 to the Red Cross of Haiti for treatment of victims of recent unrest in Port-au-Prince, the State Department said Monday.

Hector Marie Suze and her family have bunked on a bare lot with 22 other families since the Jan. 12 earthquake here toppled two interior walls and big patches of ceiling plaster in her home. The building appears inhabitable, but Suze still refuses to sleep indoors because she is afraid the continuing aftershocks will finish the job. "I want a specialist to come and say, officially, that I can come in," said Suze, 47. Help is on the way. U.S. structural engineers, including earthquake specialists from California, are putting their Haitian counterparts through a crash course on how to assess earthquake damage and determine whether a property is safe to live in. The immediate goal is to get thousands of displaced residents to move back into houses that are livable, relieving pressure on the 300-plus impromptu encampments before the impending spring rains.

A mighty earthquake rocked the small, impoverished island nation of Haiti on Tuesday, collapsing a hospital, the presidential palace and other buildings, triggering massive panic and claiming an as-yet uncounted number of lives -- perhaps thousands. Screams for help emanated from felled buildings, and chaos reigned. One diplomat called the quake a "catastrophe" in one of the countries least equipped to handle it. As night fell on the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million, reports emerged of extensive destruction; homes and buildings a shambles; trapped, seriously injured victims; and residents sleeping in streets.

A man implicated in the killing of two U.S. Embassy employees in Port-au-Prince has escaped from prison with 10 others, officials said. College Francois was being held at the Petionville prison for alleged involvement in the killing of the Haitian employees Nov. 11 during a robbery. The escape occurred after guards failed to lock three cell doors, a diplomatic source said.

The Coast Guard took 339 Haitians off a sinking shrimp boat and headed back with them to Port-au-Prince on Tuesday in what officials said may have been the biggest boatload of Haitian refugees ever seized by U.S. authorities. "It's the largest group we have on our records," Lt. Cmdr. Jim Simpson, a spokesman for the Coast Guard, said. The cutter Steadfast sighted the 65-foot converted shrimper Green Water on Monday night about 26 miles northwest of Great Inagua in the Bahamas.

Riot police fired tear gas at more than 8,000 rock-throwing protesters as a demonstration against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overpowered by throngs of supporters of the Haitian leader in Port-au-Prince, the capital. Demonstrators scattered as tear gas canisters fell and shots were heard in the crowd. There were reports of at least two people injured.

Even in normal times, Edwin Andre has all he can do to eke out a living from the corn, tomatoes and sweet potatoes he coaxes from an acre plot in northern Haiti. His wife, Roselaine Cius, peddles the produce roadside and cooks rice-and-bean plates from a stick-frame lunch shack to help support their family of eight. Suddenly, though, eight hungry mouths soared to 18 after siblings and in-laws from earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince fled by rattletrap bus to this sweep of farmland, a two-hour drive from the capital.

Five months after Haiti's devastating earthquake, the emergency response has finally secured a toehold: No one is lacking essential life-preserving services. But real recovery and reconstruction efforts have yet to begin, and there is a significant risk of further disaster. In more than 10 years of emergency relief work, I've never seen camps like those in Port-au-Prince. International standards defining what people are entitled to after a disaster are in no way being met. The Haitian camps are congested beyond imagination, with ramshackle tents standing edge to edge in every square foot of available space.

Even in normal times, Edwin Andre has all he can do to eke out a living from the corn, tomatoes and sweet potatoes he coaxes from an acre plot in northern Haiti. His wife, Roselaine Cius, peddles the produce roadside and cooks rice-and-bean plates from a stick-frame lunch shack to help support their family of eight. Suddenly, though, eight hungry mouths soared to 18 after siblings and in-laws from earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince fled by rattletrap bus to this sweep of farmland, a two-hour drive from the capital.

David Saill is 10 years old, and he came to school Monday in a freshly ironed shirt and baggy black slacks to reclaim a piece of his lost life. He couldn't have it all back. Not his home, which collapsed in the Jan. 12 earthquake. Not his very best friend, Laguer, who died when his own house fell on him. Not the sense of security he felt before he knew that the earth could shake apart his known universe. But school -- that he could have back. Or so he was told. Monday was the first day that schools in Haiti could reopen after the earthquake, which was centered near the capital, Port-au-Prince.

The ritual began just as the soft winter sun ducked behind the mountains Sunday, casting haunting shadows on this jittery Caribbean capital. Blackened pots bubbled with suppers of rice and beans above glowing charcoal. Sheets, cardboard mats and mattresses were laid neatly on the streets; a lucky few pitched pup tents. Chunks of rubble blocked roads to protect alfresco sleepers from passing motorists. The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti nearly two weeks ago, and dozens of aftershocks, including a 5.9 temblor at dawn last week, has turned Port-au-Prince into a city deathly afraid of the indoors.

Even now, despite the haunting images, the unending tales of loss and broken survival, it is difficult to fathom the scale of devastation in Haiti. The estimated 200,000 dead on half the island of Hispaniola is similar to the toll from South Asia's tsunami five years ago -- but that was across 14 countries. Haiti's approximately 1.5 million homeless is nearly quadruple the population of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina struck. At least two-thirds of Port-au-Prince has been leveled.

The flow of supplies into Haiti by air and sea picked up Friday, and more shops reopened for business, but another sharp aftershock jangled nerves, giving an extra push to those considering leaving the shattered capital city. A man and an elderly woman were rescued a staggering 10 days after homes collapsed on them. An Israeli team pulled a 21-year-old man from what once was a three-story home, according to an Israel Defense Forces statement. And an 84-year-old woman was said by relatives to have been pulled from the wreckage of her house, according to doctors administering to her at the General Hospital, where she was in critical condition.

In the smoke and dust along Rue La Saline, at the edge of a rubble-strewn dump, a little man with missing front teeth hammered away at a shattered pillar of concrete. Jean Robert Lemer, 45, had been laboring for hours to extract a piece of the steel rebar that ran through it. But he wasn't making much progress. If he had a hacksaw, he could cut off the exposed metal. But he had only a little household hammer. The sun was taking a toll, searing through a pall of white concrete dust and the black smoke of smoldering trash.

Hector Marie Suze and her family have bunked on a bare lot with 22 other families since the Jan. 12 earthquake here toppled two interior walls and big patches of ceiling plaster in her home. The building appears inhabitable, but Suze still refuses to sleep indoors because she is afraid the continuing aftershocks will finish the job. "I want a specialist to come and say, officially, that I can come in," said Suze, 47. Help is on the way. U.S. structural engineers, including earthquake specialists from California, are putting their Haitian counterparts through a crash course on how to assess earthquake damage and determine whether a property is safe to live in. The immediate goal is to get thousands of displaced residents to move back into houses that are livable, relieving pressure on the 300-plus impromptu encampments before the impending spring rains.

As the magnitude of destruction in Haiti unfolded Wednesday, U.S. television networks scrambled to get reporters into the devastated country, a task greatly complicated by the shaky security and broken infrastructure. With the air traffic control tower at the Port-au-Prince airport severely damaged, the biggest challenge was just getting near the epicenter of the earthquake that hit Tuesday. CNN's Anderson Cooper appeared to be the first television reporter to make it into the country, by hitching a ride Wednesday morning on a government helicopter from the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, and Mexico City -- U.S. military officials in Haiti said Thursday that the use of three additional airfields and the capital's seaport would boost of the flow of food, water and medical attention to earthquake victims -- at least half a million of whom, according to one count, are scattered in more than 400 camps around Port-au-Prince. Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said the military had begun using two airfields in the neighboring Dominican Republic and one south of Port-au-Prince, which was devastated in the Jan. 12 quake.

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, and Washington -- For the first time since a catastrophic earthquake shuddered across Haiti last week, there were real signs of relief Saturday, with U.S. helicopters ferrying emergency supplies from an aircraft carrier off the coast and bulldozers taking to the streets of Port-au-Prince to shove through mountains of debris. But there also were signs of the immense problems ahead: the stench of decaying bodies rising from neighborhoods; the sprawling tent cities that have sprung up across the capital; the challenge of getting help to people in the face of the breathtaking scale of destruction and need.