Body count, lawlessness rise in quake-ravaged Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE  Conditions in earthquake-ravaged Haiti grew worse Sunday as thousands of survivors begged for food and water, bulldozers dumped bodies into mass graves, and lawlessness increased.

Bulldozer after bulldozer dumped buckets full of corpses mixed with debris into a mass grave at a cemetery in downtown Port-au-Prince, the capital. Arms and legs of victims dangled from the side of one bulldozer's bucket as it prepared to dump bodies into a trench full of rotting, bloated bodies.

Just outside the cemetery gates, a young man who had been shot three times lay in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. Residents said police had suspected the man and three others of stealing.

COMPLETE COVERAGE: The Haiti earthquake

"They lined up all four and shot them," said Clifford Cadet, 15, who explained that he'd seen the developments from the opposite sidewalk. "This one took three shots," Cadet said of the man lying on the ground.

There were signs of death everywhere. The stench of rotting flesh filled the atmosphere around a collapsed T-shirt factory in the Carrefour section of Port-au-Prince. The body of a woman poked out from the rubble, her dust-covered hair visible.

The screaming from the pile of rubble that once was Katherine Flon High School, also in Carrefour, stopped two days ago. The four-story private Catholic institution swung to the side in the earthquake and hit a neighboring building before collapsing.

Rescuers removed 116 dead children, said school security guard Fritz Pierre. Of the 26 who were still alive, four have since died, he said.

"There are still children in the rubble," Pierre said.

Ivan Cruz, part of a search team from Puerto Rico, said responding to this earthquake was more difficult than searching the World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"There, we were looking for people in just one block. Here, it's everywhere," Cruz said.

Outside the gates of the T-shirt factory sat Evans Brice. The body of his girlfriend, Fiona Jean, 21, was visible in the debris. He has visited her daily.

"I can't help it," said Brice, 21, opening his wallet to show her photos. "I love her."

As conditions grew more challenging in the Caribbean nation, where a magnitude-7 earthquake struck last Tuesday, the man who led recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina said Sunday that it would make more sense to have the military run relief operations in Haiti, not USAID and not bureaucrats in Washington.

"The military should have the lead as opposed to the USAID having the lead," retired lieutenant general Russell Honore, commander of Joint Task Force-Katrina and a CNN contributor, said in a telephone interview. "I think we need to move faster and to use every military capability we've got."

U.S. military units are capable of parachuting people and equipment onto a roadway near the capital and turning it into a landing strip fit for a cargo plane in a day, Honore said. He recommended creating multiple airstrips this way.

Honore said concerns about security that have come with conducting food drops should not take precedence over getting supplies to people quickly. "I say, when you have people dying, getting food and water on the ground should end any talk of security," Honore said.

The military expert said Haitians could be hired to help distribute supplies, and he urged that rules that dictate that Haitians need visas to enter the USA should be broken.

"If we don't break some of the rules, more people will die," he said.

In spite of the growing mayhem in Haiti, there were moments of light and hope. Earlier Sunday, rescuers pulled a dehydrated but otherwise uninjured woman from the ruins of a luxury hotel in the Haitian capital. The incident drew applause from onlookers who have seen little reason to cheer in the past several days.

"It's a little miracle," the woman's husband, Reinhard Riedl, said. "She's one tough cookie. She is indestructible."

For many, help can't come soon enough. In the days since the disaster, food, water and medical care have trickled all too slowly out of the overwhelmed airport.

The biggest obstacle to getting relief supplies into Haiti has been a bottleneck at the airport, where aircraft have been barred from landing if they do not have adequate fuel on board to take off, said Maj. George Hood, Salvation Army chief of communication and development.

"There's a lack of airplane fuel once you get there," Hood said in an interview given from his cellphone. "You have to fly in with enough fuel to get out."

The roads in the Dominican Republic, which shares an island with Haiti, also have proved to be an obstacle. Dominican authorities, fearing an influx of refugees, have clamped down on border crossings. Only two roads are passable between the Haitian capital and Haiti's neighbor.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon arrived on a charter Boeing 737 and was met by Edmond Mulet, the acting chief of the U.N. peacekeeping mission. Ban's first stop is going to be the five-story U.N. headquarters that collapsed in the quake, burying U.N. mission chief Hedi Annabi and many others. Annabi's body was found Saturday.

The secretary-general says that he is "very touched and grateful" for the outpouring of international aid to help Haiti and that donors "should not waste even a single item, a dollar."

Also Sunday, former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton rejected what some characterized as attempts to make the government's response to the Haiti earthquake about politics.

Bush told NBC's Meet the Press that he doesn't know what critics are talking about when they claim President Obama is trying to score political points with a broad response to Haiti's crisis.

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has said he wouldn't trust that money donated to Haiti through the White House website would go to relief efforts.

Nobody knows how many died in Tuesday's quake. Haiti's government alone has recovered 20,000 bodies — not counting those recovered by independent agencies or relatives themselves, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said.

The Pan American Health Organization says 50,000 to 100,000 people perished in the quake. Bellerive said 100,000 would "seem to be the minimum."

Tragedy continues to play out. At the quake-damaged Port-au-Prince Municipal Hospice, a mile from the airport, there is no food or water for 80 elderly people, administrator Jean Emmanuel said. One man has died, "and if no help arrives, others won't live until tonight," he said.

Movement around the city is difficult. Trips that would normally take 35 minutes take two hours or more. There are no police or security officials directing traffic.

"There's a pressure building in the city right now," said Steve Matthews, a spokesman from the Christian charity organization World Vision.

The United Nations said the agency is feeding 40,000 and hopes to feed 2 million within a month.

Florence Louis, seven months pregnant with two children, was one of thousands of Haitians who gathered at a gate at the Cite Soleil slum, where U.N. World Food Program workers handed out high-energy biscuits for the first time since Tuesday's quake.

"It is enough because I didn't have anything at all," said Louis, 29, clutching four packets of biscuits.

The Haitian government has established 14 distribution points for food and other supplies, and U.S. Army helicopters scouted locations for more. Aid groups opened five emergency health centers. Vital gear, such as water-purification units, arrived from abroad.

World Vision has begun delivering crackers, bottles of water and bags of shoes and clothing for women and children. It delivered to two makeshift camps that serve a total of 750.

One, on empty property, was home to 457 people, said Mozard Mackensrn, 28. The families slept on the grass and under blankets held up by metal poles or other objects.

The delivery, which included three bottles of water per person, was the first aid the people had received since the earthquake in Haiti.

"This is the first time we're getting food and water," he said. "It's good for us."

Contributing: Marisol Bello, Ken Dilanian, Melanie Eversley, The Associated Press