Aid was more plentiful but still inadequate to feed and shelter the masses left homeless and injured by the 7.0 magnitude quake that rocked Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, on January 12 and killed as many as 200,000 people. "It's miserable here. It's dirty and it's boring," said Judeline Pierre-Rose, 12, camped in a park across from the collapsed national palace.
"People go to the toilet everywhere here and I'm scared of getting sick." A Florida search-and-rescue team left Haiti on Wednesday and it was reported that teams from Belgium, Luxembourg and Britain did as well. Teams from Brazil, the United States and Chile were still working with sniffer dogs at the collapsed Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince, where a whiteboard listed the names of 10 people found dead and 20 more still missing inside.
Crews had treaded gingerly, shifting rubble by hand, but were switching to heavy machinery to dig up the bulk of the hotel. "We're looking for people alive or dead," said Chilean Army Major Rodrigo Vasquez. "As well as being hopeful you have to be realistic and after nine days, reality says it is more difficult to find people alive but it's not impossible." The USNS Comfort arrived in Haitian waters with its hospital and advanced surgical units. Around 12,000 US military personnel are in Haiti and on ships offshore.
US BEING "VERY CAREFUL": Sensitive to appearances the United States was taking too forceful a role, President Barack Obama said on Wednesday the White House was being "very careful" to work with the Haitian government and the United Nations.
The United Nations is adding 2,000 troops and 1,500 police to the 9,000-member peacekeeping mission in Haiti. Between 1 million and 1.5 million Haitians were left homeless by the earthquake and Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime said some 400,000 of them would be moved to new villages to be set up outside the ravaged capital. In the first wave, the government would move 100,000 refugees to tent villages of 10,000 each near the town of Croix Des Bouquets north of the capital, he said.
Brazilian UN peacekeepers were already levelling land in Croix des Bouquets to set up a transitional tent camp at a site where the Inter-American Development Bank planned to help build permanent houses for 30,000 people. Banks were to reopen on Friday in the provinces and on Saturday in Port-au-Prince, giving most Haitians their first access to cash since the quake hit, Commerce Minister Josseline Colimon Fethiere told Reuters. Some bank branches were demolished in the earthquake but the banks planned to share customers, and to stay open on Sunday, she said.