PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — Humanitarian workers here are bracing for worsening violence and disease as hunger and thirst begin to cause serious suffering for millions of Haitians made homeless by Tuesday's earthquake.
"Over the next two or three days people will become hungry," said volunteer builder Adrian Guignard, a Canadian from the Saguenay region of Quebec who has spent part of each of the last nine years helping to build a hospital in the town of Tiverni, near Port-au-Prince. "They'll start to kill and loot out of hunger."
The dire prediction was echoed repeatedly yesterday by survivors of the quake who had fled the horror of downtown Port-au-Prince to seek refuge at the airport.
Nancy Bernard, a Montrealer traveling with a party of 60 Quebec-based Christian aid workers, said she felt intense relief as she awaited a flight home yesterday afternoon on a Canadian Forces C-17. The massive jet had just arrived from Trenton, Ont., carrying the vanguard of the Disaster Assistance Response Team.
"Not one of us was hurt," she said. "There were three scratches."
Tens of thousands, perhaps more than a hundred thousand, according to some early estimates, were not so fortunate. Bernard described seeing "hundreds of bodies" lying in the streets and strewn through the rubble.
Yesterday, according to witnesses, survivors continued to mill in the streets by the tens of thousands, as they feared aftershocks might topple buildings still standing. Many structures that survived the quake are unsafe and will have to be levelled, UN police said.
The streets of Port-au-Prince look like a war zone, said a Montreal-based police officer working with the UN mission here.
"It looks like it was bombed," said Jean Pendleton, 48, who until Tuesday taught police techniques at the academy in the city. His nine-month mission, which had three months to run, is now in doubt, he said.
"We may stay or we may go," he said. "Obviously the mandate would have to change if we stay."
Pendleton said he fears the situation in the city will reach a tipping point in the next day or two. The sheer number of corpses will cause disease, and hunger will cause looting. The threat of disease will be particularly virulent if it rains, he said.
The stench of rotting corpses is quickly becoming a problem in the downtown. In some areas masks were required yesterday, officials said. The temperature soared into the high 80s yesterday afternoon, accelerating the process of decay.
The enormity of the disaster means thousands of bodies are left untended as rescue workers continue to try to save the living trapped beneath the rubble.
Haiti's Aeroport Internationale Toussaint L'Ouverture was a scene of barely controlled chaos yesterday as aid aircraft from a dozen nations jostled for landing rights.
Canada's C-17, which lifted off from Trenton at 5:30 a.m. yesterday, arrived in the skies over Port-au-Prince at around 9:30 a.m., but the craft was not cleared to land until just before noon.
A Canadian Hercules C-130 transport, which was to have landed in the afternoon, was forced to divert to the Dominican Republic to refuel.
In the heat of the aftrernoon, a convoy of UN SUVs arrived carrying three wounded elderly Quebecers. None of their wounds appeared serious, though one man had a broken leg.
By sundown the C-17 was being reloaded with 100-odd passengers bound for Canada, all earthquake refugees. This cycle — aircraft flying in loaded with aid and out loaded with people — could last for some time, military officials said.
Canadian soldiers were trying to establish a base camp at the Canadian embassy compound in the city yesterday, but it remained unclear when electricity, phones and other basic services would be restored.
Two fully loaded frigates carrying additional aid and hundreds of sailors from Halifax and are expected to arrive in Haiti Monday.
