Relief aircraft clog airport in Port-au-Prince

Canadian planes ferry searchers, doctors, medicine to Haiti

With food, water and other aid flowing into Haiti in earnest, relief groups are focused on moving supplies out of the capital's clogged airport to hungry, haggard earthquake survivors.

Canadians have joined search and rescue efforts. An Air Canada cargo plane left Montreal Saturday with doctors and supplies, including medicine and tents.
How to help

To help those affected by the earthquake, here's a list of organizations accepting donations.

The relief flight to Port-au-Prince was carrying 100 search-and-rescue technicians from the Montreal Police Department, the Montreal Fire Department and Quebec Provincial Police.

The Boeing 767-300ER was to return to Montreal later in the day, but officials say that could prove difficult because of a bottleneck at the badly damaged airport in Port-au-Prince, which is under U.S. control.

The Canadian military says at least 800 troops from CFB Valcartier in Quebec are on standby for deployment to Haiti. An announcement confirming the size of the contingent was expected Saturday.
Haiti contacts

Canadians with family in Haiti can call the Foreign Affairs Emergency Operations Centre in Ottawa at 800-387-3124, 613-943-1055, or email [email protected]. Canadians in Haiti can get in touch with Canadian Embassy officials in Port-au-Prince by calling collect to 613-996-8885.

Meanwhile, two C-130 Hercules aircraft were scheduled to arrive at Montreal's Trudeau International Airport on Saturday, returning with Canadian evacuees. The first landed around 11 a.m.; it's not known when the other aircraft will be able to take off from Haiti.

"It's an extremely small airport [in Port-au-Prince]. There are planes circling and those on the ground are having a tough time getting out of there. There's not enough personnel to get the planes off the ground," said the CBC's Kristin Falcao from the hotel where evacuees who are not injured will be debriefed by the Red Cross.

The plan is to send two C-177 transport planes every day, with smaller C-130 Hercules aircraft making three flights every two days.

About 270 evacuees landed in Montreal early Friday. They were flown out of Haiti on Thursday on Canadian Forces flights. Most arrived with only the clothes they were wearing when the earthquake hit.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has asked Americans hoping to charter flights for independent relief flights to allow her department to co-ordinate aid efforts.

"That precious airspace is like gold right now," she told reporters at Homestead Air Force Base near Miami.

Officials now estimate as many as 200,000 people died in Tuesday's quake. Thousands remain buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Thousands of decaying bodies are lying unclaimed in the streets. Thousands more have been burned or buried in mass graves.

The United Nations says it's feeding 8,000 people daily. About 3 million people have no access to food, water, and shelter.

The Haitian Embassy in Ottawa is scrambling to get aid to Haiti. The embassy's Chargé d'Affaires, Nathalie Gissel-Menos, says every minute counts.

"People are hungry, they are thirsty, they are in pain and they are desperate. The more time it takes for help to arrive, the more difficult it will be, because then you are facing the possibility of riots," she told CBC News.

There are still few signs that any aid is reaching people in much of the city, four days after the quake, amid growing concern that the desperate — or the criminal — are taking things into their own hands.

A water delivery truck driver said he was attacked in one of the city's slums. There were reports of isolated looting as young men walked through downtown with machetes, and robbers reportedly shot one man, whose body was then left on the street.

On Friday night, a group of Belgian doctors and nurses left a field hospital over security concerns, CNN reported. The medical team returned Saturday morning.

[link to www.cbc.ca]