Quake victims seek comfort in prayers

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, and Mexico City -- Haitians bereft of homes and loved ones held Sunday prayers in the streets of their earthquake-ravaged capital while rescue workers continued digging in the ruins for something like a miracle.

In front of the broken churches, which in some cases still harbored bodies, worshipers looked to powers beyond their grasp for help. “Don’t pray for the dead,” boomed Joel St. Amour, preaching outside the Evangelical Baptist Church. “Pray for the living.”

Before him, 30 worshipers gathered on folding metal chairs under bougainvillea and mimosa trees and sang “How Great Thou Art.” The air carried the sickly scent of death.

On a day of prayer, earthly concerns such as food, water and security remained at the forefront.

Hungry residents jostled for rations that were fitfully making their way into the devastated capital, Port-au-Prince. There were scattered reports of looting in the city, but U.S. military officials said the streets were largely calm and that American troops who had been delivering goods were warmly received.

Security “is a concern and we are going to have to address it and we are going to have to provide a safe and secure environment in order to be successful with our humanitarian assistance mission,” U.S. Army Lt. Gen. P.K. Keen said during an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union with John King.”

There were more signs Sunday that aid, which began to get to victims in any meaningful way only a day earlier, was reaching residents deeper into the city, despite a logjam of cargo at the Port-au-Prince airport. The U.N. peacekeeping mission, the World Food Program, Oxfam and International Committee of the Red Cross were all more visible than they had been in recent days.

At a tent city at the prime minister’s mansion between Port-au-Prince and suburban Petionville, the Red Cross delivered water, a Chinese team of medics offered first aid, and the United Nations handed out hygiene kits.

Downtown, excavators began clearing out the mountains of wreckage. The U.S. Army secured the General Hospital during the afternoon, as doctors came in with aid groups and on their own.

“We’re so short of alcohol we had to use vodka to clean our instruments,” said George Boutin, an orthopedic surgeon from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “It’s all crush injuries. Amputations. That’s all I’m doing.”

Still, the scene was very different from two days ago, when at least 2,000 bodies lay in the parking lot of the hospital, which also holds the morgue, and the dying lay unattended outside.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon traveled to Port-au-Prince to assess damage and discuss the organization’s response to the quake, which by some early estimates has left more than 100,000 people dead and affected 3 million residents. At least 36 U.N. workers, including mission chief Hedi Annabi, were among the dead.

U.N. officials said Sunday that the organization has provided food for 60,000 people so far in Port-au-Prince.

Former President Clinton, the U.N. special envoy for Haiti, was expected to arrive in Port-au-Prince today for an inspection tour.

The earthquake, which hit the most densely populated corner of a deeply impoverished and troubled nation, has challenged the world’s capacity to provide help quickly and effectively.

Despite the flow of aid and U.S. troops, hundreds of thousands of residents were still waiting for food, water and medical attention. The influx of relief supplies and rescue workers has stretched the Port-au-Prince airport, with one runway, and rubble-blocked roads have slowed delivery of supplies to neighborhoods in the greatest need.

Lt. Gen. Keen on CNN said that 1,000 U.S. troops were on the ground in Haiti and 3,600 more were working from naval vessels, including the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, equipped with 19 helicopters that were being used to shuttle goods and equipment. The number of U.S. forces in or near Haiti is expected to increase to more than 12,000 by today.

Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division had delivered more than 80,000 bottles of water and 130,000 food rations, he said.

“We had a very good day yesterday,” he said Sunday. About 600,000 rations are to arrive in coming days.

USAID Director Rajiv Shah said on the same program that officials had brought three water-purification units capable of producing nearly 26,500 gallons a day, with at least seven others on the way. He said bulldozers had cleared some roads and that more military heavy equipment would arrive in coming days.

“We have been doing everything we can to get as many assets on the ground as possible and get them deployed quickly,” Shah said.

U.S. officials said they had made strides toward creating order at the Port-au-Prince airport since taking over air traffic control and the handling of goods that are arriving around the clock. But they said the facility’s limited capacity and torrent of aid flights have complicated the job.

“It’s a matter of balance between getting relief supplies on the ground, getting the people on the ground that are necessary to get those relief supplies distributed, and getting the logistical capability on the ground to continue that, and the vehicles so we can get it out by ground as well as by air,” Keen said.

Even as the aid mission ramped up, U.S. officials said rescue efforts were still underway, despite a shrinking likelihood of finding anyone alive in the rubble.

As the sun went down, U.S. and French rescue crews worked feverishly to pull out people still trapped downtown. Guided by floodlights, the rescue teams worked together to try to free a woman from a collapsed building on the Grand Rue, a once-fashionable street of 19th century French-style buildings.

The French team found her pinned between two slabs of concrete. The Americans came to help.

After 4 1/2 hours, she remained trapped and rescuers were fast approaching a hard choice. “Our doctors are going in the hole with her,” said Richard Yuras, a specialist with Virginia Task Force One from Fairfax County. “The last resort is amputation. If it’s life versus limb, we go with life.”

A team from the United States pulled a woman from a fallen university building where she had been trapped for 97 hours, the Associated Press reported. Another woman was pulled from the rubble of the Montana Hotel, the news service reported, while a separate team was able to provide water to three people heard shouting from beneath the ruins of a supermarket.

Amid the struggles to find and provide for survivors, anger and frustration were evident in the city. Scuffles broke out in long lines at gas stations. Many other people hauled luggage through the street as they made their way toward the countryside, out of the city’s hellish landscape. Countless Haitians remained outdoors, homeless or afraid to go inside. Looters hit a strip of stores, grabbing shampoo and anything else. Police shot one to death, witnesses said.

Yet in some pockets, tiny signs of recovery peeked like sprouts. Garbage trucks hauled away rubble. Women selling fruit and vegetables were back on the street. Cellphones began to flicker back to life.

At the St. Louis Roman Catholic Church, Father Rams Lapommeray held services at dawn for 200 or so people who assembled in the driveway and on the lawn of the church compound, where a body wrapped in sheets lay outside the gate.

Lapommeray read from Isaiah in an effort to give hope to his flock. He told them not to be afraid because God does not abandon his followers.

“People need hope to continue to walk in this hard life,” Lapommeray said later. “Before this, many lived in misery and sadness. This situation is pushing them down. . . . They have to have hope.”

Residents who had fled the neighborhood’s flattened homes milled on the lawn or sat, looking dejected, on wooden pews that had been salvaged from the church. In the back of the compound, next to a shrine of the Virgin Mary, a lone doctor tried to treat dozens of wounded people. His patient at the moment was a 2 1/2 -year-old boy with a ghastly foot injury. The child shrieked and wailed. The doctor had no painkillers.

“Just because this happens doesn’t mean God doesn’t love you,” said Mary Marthe Joseph, combing the hair of a 4-year-old girl she didn’t know. “He will help us go on. I have no idea if the foreigners will help. I haven’t seen anything here yet.”

wilkinson@latimes.com

joe.mozingo@latimes.comken.ellingwood@latimes.com