Rescue teams pull back as Haiti aid flows in

PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – The search for survivors  of Haiti’s killer earthquake started to wind down as  international rescue teams begin pulling back and aid, though  more plentiful today, was still not enough for the masses  left homeless and injured.
A desperately poor country before the 7.0 magnitude quake  roiled its capital city, Port-au-Prince, on Jan. 12 and killed  as many as 200,000 people, Haiti now looks to the world for  basic sustenance.
“Are we satisfied with the job we are doing? Definitely  not,” said Jon Andrus, deputy director of the Pan American  Health Organization.
“But progress is being made. Think of what we started with  when the world came crashing down on Haiti. No roads, only  rubble and dead bodies. No communication, only death and  despair.”
The strong 5.9 tremor that hit yesterday sent alarmed  Haitians running away from buildings and walls but did not  appear to cause any major new destruction or to slow the  international relief effort now bolstered by more U.S. troops.
Violence and looting has subsided as U.S. troops provided  security for water and food distribution and thousands of  displaced Haitians heeded the government’s advice to seek  shelter outside Port-au-Prince.
Sensitive to appearances the United States was taking too  forceful a role, President Barack Obama said yesterday the  White House was being “very careful” to work with the Haitian  government and the United Nations.
“I want to make sure that when America projects its power  around the world, it’s not seen only when it’s fighting a war,”  Obama said on ABC News. “It’s got to also be able to help  people in desperate need. And ultimately that will be good for  us. That will be good for our national security over the long  term.”
The United Nations praised the Dominican Republic for  setting up a humanitarian aid corridor from Santo Domingo to  Port-au-Prince and sending 150 U.N. troops to join a Peruvian  contingent of U.N. blue helmets to protect the area.
U.S. Marines in landing craft brought ashore bulldozers,  mechanical diggers and trucks on a beach at Neply village, west  of Port-au-Prince, from warships anchored offshore. Pack-laden  troops on the beach handed out food rations and set up  temporary shelters for the homeless.
The USNS Comfort arrived in Haitian waters with its  hospital and advanced surgical units. Around 12,000 U.S.  military personnel are in Haiti and on ships offshore.
The United Nations is adding 2,000 troops and 1,500 police  to the 9,000-member peacekeeping mission in Haiti.
A Florida search and rescue team left Haiti yesterday  and it was reported that teams from Belgium, Luxembourg and  Britain did as well.
U.S. and international teams have rescued 122 people,  including three yesterday, and Haitians rescued many others  in the hours and days after the quake.
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.”
LACKING THE BASICS
Between 1 million and 1.5 million Haitians were left  homeless and many were jammed into haphazard, open-air camps  with no latrines.
“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.”
Residents have been sleeping outdoors because their homes  were destroyed or out of fear that aftershocks would bring down  more buildings.
Most of the basics of city life were still missing or  barely functional in Port-au-Prince. Hospitals were overwhelmed  and doctors lacked anesthesia, forcing them to operate on  wide-awake patients with only local painkillers.
Doctors Without Borders said there were 10-to-12-day  backlogs of patients at some of its surgical sites and they are  seeing infections of untreated wounds.
“Some victims are already dying of sepsis,” the group  said.
Aid groups brought in mobile kitchens and bakeries but  struggled to feed the hungry. The World Food Program estimated  there were 200 homeless encampments in Port-au-Prince alone,  and urged the government to begin consolidating them to  streamline aid distribution.
“We will probably need to feed between 1 to 2 million but  it depends on the rate at which people leave the city,” said  Thiry Benoit, WFP’s deputy country representative in Haiti.
STORM SEASON LOOMS
The city’s water system was only partially functional but  tanker trucks began to deliver water to makeshift camps where  people lined up to fill their buckets.
The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration  (IOM), distributed tents, blankets and plastic sheeting  provided by Japan and Turkey, but warned that more permanent  shelter would soon be needed.
“Tents will not work in May when the long rainy season  begins and later when hurricane season starts, but at this  point there is not much choice,” said IOM Chief of Mission  Vincent Houver.
Brazilian U.N. peacekeepers were leveling land in the Croix  des Bouquets suburb of Port-au-Prince 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. The  plan would let displaced Haitians help build their own new  homes under a food-for-work scheme, allowing them stay close to  the area where they had made a living.
Landline telephones in Port-au-Prince were still down but  two wireless networks had spotty service, said U.S. Federal  Communications Commission officials helping with the relief.
More than 100 Haitian children were to arrive today  in the Netherlands, where they were in the process of being  adopted before the earthquake hit.
But UNICEF and other children’s aid groups said foreign  adoption should be a last resort for Haitian youngsters whose  parents were dead or missing, and that it was preferable to  reunite them with their extended families.