Morgue Overwhelmed in Haiti
By Jacqueline Charles, Lesley Clark, Frances Robles and Trenton Daniel | The Miami Herald-Link to the article
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/82325.htmlPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Survivors of Haiti's devastating earthquake waded through thousands of bodies strewn around the Port-au-Prince morgue, as rescue workers from across the globe raced against the clock to reach the shattered nation.
With emergency crews from the United States, Spain and Venezuela already on the ground, others were being turned away from landing at the city's airport due to overcrowding.
President Barack Obama said U.S. troops were on their way in what he called ``one of the largest relief efforts in history.''
As crowds camped out in city parks, bodies lay along sidewalks as common citizens did their best to tend to the wounded.
The Haitian Red Cross now estimates the number of deaths at between 45,000 and 50,000.
At the Port-au-Prince morgue, rescue workers ran out of places to store the bodies of the dead Thursday, forcing police, civilians and private contractors to leave the bodies in a pile outside.
An exasperated hospital manager said he had yet to receive authority from the central government to remove the corpses inside the facility.
As corpses were placed in the street, a small group of solemn onlookers watched. One woman waited beside a pine box, trying to find her loved one.
The mass of naked, swollen dead bodies included toddlers and adults, and made a gruesome scene as flies hovered over their bodies.
One woman's body had a red ribbon and a handwritten name tag tied to her left big toe.
Lionel Gaedi went to the morgue to find his brother, Josef.
``I don't see him,'' Gaedia said. ``It's a catastrophe. God gives, God takes.''
Gaedi looked at the mass of bodies exposed to the blazing sun and gave up, sure that he would never find his brother in the pile.
Canadian medical consultant Yuri Zelenski said he was working with local authorities to find a solution to the morgue's overcrowding.
I have been to many things, and I have never been to anything like this,'' Zelenski said as he looked on in disgust. ``I am shocked. I am short for words. These are hundreds of people, not buried. The morgue here was not designed for such a disaster.
At the Hotel Villa Creole in Petionville, furniture was used as gurneys and hotel guests with no medical training worked as EMTs.
``These people have nowhere else to go,'' Anne Wanlund said as she picked pieces of concrete out of a woman's head wound. ``Wherever they think there are supplies, any chance of getting help, they are going to take it.''
Wanlund, an office worker from Washington, D.C., who works with a State Department AIDS program, said she had learned by watching.
In the lobby were children with heads wrapped in blood-soaked gauze and little boys with feet twisted in the wrong direction. One woman lay so still it was unclear whether she was alive.
Juidthe Jacques, who brought her mother Marguerite in with a broken knee, fought back tears.
``Where are the doctors? We expected doctors,'' she said. ``The doctors are full, and all the people who go there lose their mind.''..........
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So, the "Poor Black People" are "Looting" to avoid WHAT??? How about death!!!! This media and anyone that stands up for the media using the word looting should be ashame of themselves. :mad:
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