Haiti marks two years after catastrophic quake

Workers clean up a camp which housed people displaced by the January 12, 2010 earthquake for almost two years, in Port-au-Prince January 10, 2012. Almost 500,000 people still live in tent encampments throughout the Haitian capital as the second anniversary of the quake approaches, according to the Red Cross. Credit: Reuters/Swoan Parker

PORT-AU-PRINCE,  (Reuters) – Haitians marked the  second anniversary of the earthquake that ravaged their  impoverished Caribbean nation yesterday, mourning the dead as  their president held out hope for a better future.

Workers clean up a camp which housed people displaced by the January 12, 2010 earthquake for almost two years, in Port-au-Prince January 10, 2012. Almost 500,000 people still live in tent encampments throughout the Haitian capital as the second anniversary of the quake approaches, according to the Red Cross. Credit: Reuters/Swoan Parker

Many women wore white dresses, and men turned out in dark  suits, as they attended church services and held solemn  ceremonies at mass grave sites across the deeply religious  country.

The 7 magnitude quake on Jan. 12, 2010, which lasted only 10  to 20 seconds, was one of the world’s worst natural disasters.  It toppled buildings and homes, killing roughly 300,000 people  and making more than 1.5 million homeless.

President Michel Martelly has vowed to redouble government  efforts to help people rebuild their lives and reverse a  painfully slow recovery marked by squalid tent camps that are  still home to more than a half a million people in the capital,  Port-au-Prince.

“This year is a year when we will really start rebuilding  physically but also rebuilding the hope and the future of the  Haitian people,” the shaven-headed former Carnival music star  known as “Sweet Micky” said on Wednesday.

In one of the main events of Thursday’s remembrance,  Martelly and former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who has  promoted job creation to lift Haiti out of decades of misery and  corruption, paid homage to the dead at Titanyen, a mass burial  ground north of Port-au-Prince.

Tens of thousands of quake victims are thought to have been  buried in unmarked graves at the site. Laid out across a vast  open field, it had been a dumping ground for victims of dreaded  death squads during the Duvalier family dictatorship.

‘WHIMS OF NATURE’

Speaking at the site, Martelly said the quake was one of  many catastrophes in a country run by ruthless despots for most  of the 200 years since a slave revolt freed it from French rule.

Misery stems from more than just the “deadly and disastrous  whims of nature,” he said.