U.S. Hospital Ship Reaches Haiti; Military Role Grows

[Bacchus39]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20100120/pl_bloomberg/a9saedrhoax0




..U.S. Hospital Ship Reaches Haiti; Military Role Grows

Wed Jan 20, 3:22 pm ET
Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort reached Haiti’s coast today, bolstering the relief operation’s capacity to treat quake-related injuries as the American military presence on the island surges.

The USNS Comfort, which was used to tend to victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita and helped with World Trade Center recovery efforts, can handle 30 to 50 patients at a time. The ship has 12 operating rooms and 1,000-bed hospital. The U.S. has ordered 4,000 more troops to Haiti, diverting them from deployments to Europe and the Middle East, Agence France-Presse reported today.

The U.S. bolstered its presence in the country and offshore to 11,000 soldiers and sailors yesterday, with troops landing at the ruins of the presidential palace. The Haitian government has handed control of the country’s only international airport to the U.S. military while officials of the nations providing relief are coordinating daily with Haiti’s president or prime minister, Major General Daniel Allyn said yesterday.

The Haitian government has buried more than 72,000 bodies and the overall death toll from the 7-magnitude earthquake may be higher than 200,000, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said yesterday.

More than 30 U.S. military and Coast Guard helicopters are being used and 15 more will arrive tomorrow, the U.S. Southern Command said in an e-mailed statement. At least nine ships are operating near Haiti, including the USS Carl Vinson, and seven more are headed there.

Another Earthquake

An earthquake measuring 6.1 struck Haiti today, eight days after the devastating temblor, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Today’s quake was centered 59 kilometers (36 miles) to the west-southwest of the capital, Port-au-Prince, at a depth of 9 kilometers, the USGS said in a preliminary e-mailed report. It struck at 6:03 a.m. local time, the USGS said.

Rescue workers with the New York police and fire departments reported “violent shaking” yet were able to continue working, according to an e-mailed statement from the police department. The 76-member team, which includes four police dogs, pulled two children alive from the rubble of a brick building last night.

Buildings shook in Port-au-Prince and people fled to the streets, the Associated Press reported. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the earthquake was located too far inland to generate any tidal waves in the Caribbean, AP said.

‘Sleeping in Tents’

“Our central office here in Port-au-Prince shook considerably -- we are sleeping in tents on the lawn outside,” said Kristie van de Wetering, communications manager for CHF International-Haiti, in an e-mail to Bloomberg News. “Of course, it shook us up, especially as we have not really felt any aftershocks in the past 24 hours or so.”

AFP said a crashing sound suggested an already damaged building may have collapsed. AP said wails of terror rose from survivors of the earlier quake as people poured out of unstable buildings.

The latest quake struck as the U.S. dispatched more ships to help clear Haiti’s ports and speed up supply of food, water and medicine to victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake while rescuers extended the search for survivors.

“You cannot fully meet the needs of over 2 million people just using helicopters,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in New Delhi today after signing deployment orders for harbor- clearing ships and other vessels to help restore Port-au- Prince’s devastated shipping facilities.

Lives Saved

So far, 120 people have been pulled alive from rubble, John Holmes, UN emergency relief coordinator, said.

“In logistics terms, we are beginning to turn a corner, but recognize that there is a huge way to go before we can get it to work as well as we want it to,” Holmes said.

Haiti has turned down the Dominican Republic’s offer to contribute troops to the United Nations mission, said Luis Lithgow, the Dominican Republic’s deputy ambassador to the UN.

U.S. and UN troops and rescue teams have stepped up relief efforts as relatives of the missing begged them to keep up the search.

More than 1.5 million people are homeless, the European Commission said in a statement on its Web site, citing the Haitian government.

“We will never know what the death toll was,” Edmond Mulet, head of the UN mission in Haiti, said in a videoconference.

More Troops

The UN Security Council yesterday unanimously approved a U.S.-drafted resolution to raise the authorized strength of its peacekeeping force in Haiti by 3,500 soldiers and civilian police.

The new troops will reinforce about 7,000 soldiers and 2,000 police officers already in the country. The added personnel will be used to secure aid corridors in Port-au-Prince and routes from northern ports and the neighboring Dominican Republic, Alain LeRoy, head of UN peacekeeping, said. That may help alleviate concern that food, water and medicine aren’t reaching victims quickly enough.

Japan will send about 100 military personnel to provide medical aid, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said today in Tokyo, quadrupling the country’s aid workers in Haiti.

The 40 medical professionals and support staffers will leave Japan as early as tomorrow to relieve a team in Leogane city, 40 kilometers west of Port-au-Prince, Hirano said. Japan will also triple the number of logistics personnel to 30, the defense ministry said.

‘Severely Damaged’

International Committee of the Red Cross staffers reached Leogane for the first time. The town was “severely damaged” and its people are in urgent need of assistance, Philippe David, the ICRC’s health coordinator in Haiti, said in a statement.

An ICRC-chartered airplane carrying 36 metric tons of water and sanitation equipment as well as medical items left Geneva yesterday for the Dominican Republic. From there, the cargo will move overland to Port-au-Prince.

A second plane carrying 2,500 family kits, containing essential items such as blankets, kitchen sets and plastic sheeting for temporary shelter, is due to leave Panama for the Dominican Republic in the coming days.

A German television appeal for funds to help victims of the earthquake that aired last night has so far raised more than 20 million euros ($28 million), the newspaper Bild said in a faxed statement.

Siemens AG and Volkswagen AG were among companies that each pledged 1 million euros, according to Bild, which organized the appeal together with ZDF television.