By IANS/EFE,
Port-au-Prince : The Haitian government plans mass evacuation of survivors to prevent possible epidemic in the capital city, where Tuesday’s devastating earthquake left about 100,000 people dead and 600,000 homeless.
Interior Minister Antoine Bien-Aime said it was one of the best solutions to save some 600,000 people who were left homeless. He estimated some 100,000 people, around 70,000 of them from Port-au-Prince, were killed in the tragedy.
“In many cases we will have to proceed by evacuating the population, and we plan to build provisional camps to receive the victims” and keep epidemics from breaking out when the rains start, the minister said Saturday.
Health Minister Alex Larsen Friday said 50,000 people were killed and 250,000 injured in Haiti’s worst earthquake in more than 200 years.
Many Haitians, angry at being left to their fate, Saturday set off a new wave of pillaging stores and assaulting vendors downtown in the capital, under the impassive gaze of police and UN peacekeepers. Tuesday’s quake, according to the UN, has caused a “historic disaster”.
Meanwhile, a magnitude-4.5 aftershock shook the Caribbean nation again Saturday and left the capital in a state of panic, according to the US Geological Survey.
The epicentre was registered at 25 km west of Port-au-Prince, where the temblor temporarily halted the rescue operation.
The International Organisation for Migration has delivered a great number of tents for the homeless, but the government still has not begun to distribute them “because we’re studying whether it is better to give them tents or carry out massive evacuations,” the interior minister said.
Larsen, the health minister, said that the government is urging all homeless people to leave town and stay with their relatives living in the interiors of the country.
“When we start knocking down houses that have been damaged, the air will be unbreathable because more bodies will appear,” he said, adding that “somewhat more than 25,000” bodies were found with most of them ending up in common graves covered with quicklime and dirt.
About criticisms of a supposed government plan to burn the bodies as a more secure means of avoiding epidemics, Larsen said “we still haven’t taken a decision”.
The two ministers also justified the delay in attending to the injured by blaming on damage to the infrastructure and communications.
“We believe we will keep increasing the number of beneficiaries and the capability to distribute dry food products with the help of the World Food Programme,” the interior minister said.
Port-au-Prince’s state-run General Hospital began to receive medicine, paramedic goods and food for patients, after three days out of action, while the general manager Guy Laroche said that all the aid “has come from NGOs and not from the government”.
The situation is worse in the refugee camps set up spontaneously in parks and squares of the capital, where aid is yet to be seen and those left homeless have scarcely anything to eat.
A member of Port-au-Prince’s civil defence agency, Benoit Frantz, told Efe Saturday that in these improvised shelters no one has seen any aid coming in so the people get food however they can, and complain about the lack of medicine, water and portable toilets.