Trapped Haitian Girl Dies Despite Rescue Effort

[Hissyspit]

Source: Associated Press

Trapped Haitian girl dies despite rescue effort

By MIKE MELIA, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jan 14, 10:31 pm ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Trapped beneath the crumbled remains of her home, the 9-year-old girl could be heard begging for rescue as neighbors clawed at sand and debris with their bare hands. It had been two days since the earthquake collapsed the cinderblock home, trapping Haryssa Keem Clerge inside the basement. Friends and neighbors braved aftershocks to climb over the rubble, one of hundreds of toppled structures teetering on the side of a ravine.

- snip -

Just hours after her screams renewed rescuers' hopes Thursday, the child's lifeless body was finally pulled from the mass of concrete and twisted metal. Wrapped in a green bath towel, it was placed inside a loose desk drawer. With nowhere to take it, the body was then left on the hood of a battered Isuzu Trooper. "There are no police, no anybody," said the child's despairing godmother, Kettely Clerge. Neighbors had to hold her back as she walked toward the building's winding, partially collapsed stairway, wailing: "I want to see her!"

- snip -

"Haiti is an abandoned country," he said. "People are relying on themselves."

Across Port-au-Prince, similar tragedies unfolded on Thursday. At the St. Gerard School, Cindy Terasme broke into sobs when she caught sight of her 14-year-old brother Jean Gaelle Dersmorne's feet protruding from the rubble. The child was dead. So was another schoolgirl known only as Ruth, whose dust-covered legs dangled lifelessly from the collapsed wall she was trapped under.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cb_haiti_trapped_alive

[dipsydoodle]

1. It would seem

from all of our TV news reports here in the UK that substnatial amounts of help and aid are at the airport. What remains lacking is some form of organisation to get things moving quickly.

[qanda]

2. The infrastructure is so crumbled that they're having a difficult time moving the aid

Helicopters have arrived that are going to be able to avoid the broken roads, but where will they set up the aid stations? It's a nightmare.

[stray cat]

3. Our aircraft carrier with helicoptors arrive this am and will provide a base

we currently don't live in a world where people beam over instantly like star trek

[Xenotime]

5. Funny the news people have been there for 3 days.

Somehow they can get there quickly.

[gorfle]

6. It's easy to move a man with a camera and a sat phone.

Not so easy to move an aircraft carrier.

[FarCenter]

7. With destroyed port facilities, an aircraft carrier isn't too useful

It has over a dozen helicopters which are of some use.

It can distill a lot of sea water into fresh water, but how do you get it off the carrier and to the people?

[fascisthunter]

9. .

[CreekDog]

10. a news person is not equipped and not trying to feed a city of 2 million

get a clue.

[avaistheone1]

11. News folks also have tracked down Osama Bin Laden and interviewed

him in the past, when all the might of U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon could not even remotely locate Bin Laden.

Some news people can be very,very savvy.

[Thothmes]

12. Thats because they do not travel with a retinue of 4500 persons

tons of rations, millions of gallons of water. They show up with a 3 man camera crew. They are as useful to the present crisis as a pot full of warm spit.

[orbitalman]

4. This is doubly tragic when you have to see it happen...

or watch it as it happens.

[mzmolly]

8. A most heartbreaking story.

Horrible.