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Across Haiti, a Scene of Devastation
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"The whole town of Gonaives has to be rebuilt," said Myrta Kaulard, a representative of the U.N. World Food Program in Haiti. "It's really an enormous challenge that will continue."
U.S. Marines and members of the U.S. Coast Guard, along with U.N. workers, delivered food and water to the stricken area by boat and helicopter, U.N. officials in Haiti said. An American Navy ship, the USS Kearsarge, arrived Monday in Port-au-Prince carrying helicopters and boats to help stem the humanitarian crisis.
Relief workers have stockpiled enough food to assist half a million people for a month, but downed bridges and washed-out roads have often blocked its delivery. Louis Vigneault, another UNICEF official in Haiti, said some residents of Gonaives spent days on their rooftops waiting for rescue.
"It is impossible to get there, and it is impossible for the people to get out of there," Kaulard said. "These seven bridges that have collapsed have cut the country in slices like a sausage, and it's really impossible to use the road network. . . . The challenge that we will have to face is how to continue supplying without roads."
Rescue crews said that they have made 46 cargo flights in six days and have transported close to 70 tons of supplies to Haitian storm victims, but that they still need more helicopters and boats.
The storms have struck a country already burdened by political strife and rampant poverty; the unemployment rate is 80 percent.
On Tuesday in Cabaret, outside of Port-au-Prince, throngs of people lined streets that pass wrecked houses and fields of flattened plantain trees, watching as bulldozers removed the rubble.
Only a small, wrecked portion of Marie Solage Aristild's two-story, five-bedroom house, which she shared with seven relatives -- remained standing Tuesday. She had lived in it for more than 20 years.
Aristild, her family and neighbors evacuated to higher ground before the storm hit and returned the next day to find their lives undone. Aristild, 41, recalled standing with both hands on her head staring at the empty space and brown water rushing below. "You can't do nothing, just turn to God and see what God can do," she said.
