Airport Chaos Snarls Relief

Facility had to stop accepting flights, hampering delivery of aid
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 14, 2010 5:10 PM CST
Airport Chaos Snarls Relief
A group of women grieve in Port-au-Prince.   (AP Photo/Carl Juste, The Miami Herald)

The one-runway airport in Port-au-Prince is struggling to keep up with traffic and had to temporarily stop allowing incoming flights today. The airport chaos, along with damaged roads, ports, and communications, is seriously complicating international relief efforts, reports the Wall Street Journal. But in one measure of good news, the road from the airport to the city has finally become passable. The latest death toll estimates stand at 50,000.

Amid the tragedy, rescue crews found a security guard alive in the rubble of the UN headquarters, as the number of UN staffers confirmed dead rose to 36, with more than 100 still unaccounted for in the rubble. As rescue efforts continue, the depth of damage to the Haitian infrastructure has begun to set in, with hospitals, schools, and shops all but obliterated. Asked by USA Today what Haiti needed from the rest of the world, one aid worker simply responded: "Everything."
(More Haiti stories.)

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