Haiti Gov't Gets 1 Cent Of Every US Dollar

Less than a penny of each dollar the U.S. is spending on earthquake relief in Haiti is going in the form of cash to the Haitian government, according to an independent review of relief efforts.

Two weeks after President Obama announced an initial $100 million for Haiti earthquake relief, U.S. government spending on the disaster has nearly quadrupled to $379 million, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced Wednesday. That's about $1.25 each from everyone in the United States.

Each American dollar roughly breaks down like this: 42 cents for disaster assistance, 33 cents for U.S. military aid, nine cents for food, nine cents to transport the food, five cents for paying Haitian survivors for recovery efforts, just less than one cent to the Haitian government, and about half a cent to the Dominican Republic.

The U.S. government money is part of close to $2 billion in relief aid flowing into Haiti -- almost all of it managed by organizations other than the Haitian government, which has been struggling to re-establish its authority since the quake. On Wednesday, a defensive President Rene Preval acknowledged his country's reputation, but said aid money isn't lining the pockets of government officials.

"There's a perception of corruption, but I would like to tell the Haitian people that the Haitian government has not seen one penny of all the money that has been raised - millions are being made on the right, millions on the left, it's all going to the NGOs (nongovernmental organizations)" Preval said, speaking in Creole at a news conference.

Relief experts say it would be a mistake to send too much direct cash to the Haitian government, which was already unstable before the quake and routinely included on lists of the world's most corrupt countries.

"I really believe Americans are the most generous people who ever lived, but they want accountability," said Timothy R. Knight, a former US AID assistant director who spent 25 years distributing disaster aid. "In this situation they're being very deliberate not to just throw money at the situation but to analyze based on a clear assessment and make sure that money goes to the best place possible."

The review of federal budget spreadsheets, procurement reports and contract databases shows the vast majority of U.S. funds going to established and tested providers including the U.N. World Food Program, the Pan American Health Organization and nonprofit groups such as Save The Children, which have sent in everything from the $3.4 million barge that cleared the port for aid deliveries to pinto beans at 40 cents a pound.

"We are trying to respond as quickly as we can to this catastrophe of biblical proportions by mustering all of the resources that the United States government can bring to bear, first on rescue leading into relief, which is where we are right now, and hopefully seamlessly into recovery," said Lewis Lucke, U.S. special coordinator for relief and reconstruction.

Major relief efforts were launched within hours of the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed at least 150,000, devastated the capital of Port-au-Prince and affected a third of its 9 million people. Behind each effort has been cash and contracts, airline tickets to be purchased and ocean freighters to be leased.

Of each U.S. taxpayer dollar, 42 cents funds US AID's disaster assistance - everything from $5,000 generators to $35 hygiene kits with soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste for a family of five.

Another 33 cents is going to the U.S. military, paying for security, search and rescue teams, and the Navy's hospital ship USNS Comfort.

Just under a dime has already been spent on food: 122 million pounds of pinto beans, black beans, rice, corn soy blend and vegetable oil. When purchased in bulk, the actual food prices are relatively low. Pinto beans, for example, cost the U.S. government 40 cents a pound when purchased in 5 million-pound batches last week.

Getting the food to Haitians - paying for freighters, trucks and distribution centers, and the people to staff them, took another nine cents from each dollar.

Initial disaster spending was aimed at saving lives; now the spending is shifting to recovery. The Obama administration is putting five cents of each dollar into efforts to pay survivors to work. One program already in place describes paying 40,000 Haitians $3 per day for 20 days to clean up around hospitals and dig latrines. That project also includes renting 10 excavators and loaders, at $600 each, and 10 dump trucks at $50 a load.

Just under one penny of each dollar is going straight to the shattered Haitian government, whose president is sleeping in a tent while struggling to organize an administration that was notoriously unstable even before the earthquake.

The U.S. rarely gives large amounts of money directly to governments, a practice that is "very defensible from my point of view," said John Simon, who coordinated U.S. responses to international disasters under President Bush's administration.

A final half-cent funds three Dominican Republic hospitals near the Haitian border, where refugees have been begging for help.

The U.S. is providing the largest slice of a global response that totals more than $1 billion in government pledges. The European Union's 27 nations are contributing $575 million. The U.S. also has long been the largest donor of ongoing foreign aid that Haiti depends on for up to 40 percent of its budget, with more than $260 million in U.S. money last year aimed at promoting stability, prosperity and democracy.

The money is flowing through federal agencies that administer $2.6 billion already appropriated in the 2010 budget for foreign disaster relief, said Thomas Gavin, a spokesman at the White House Office of Management and Budget. He said there are no plans to ask Congress for more money.

Of the private disaster aid flowing into Haiti, U.S. charities have raised $470 million, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Haiti To Resettle 400,000 Quake Victims

Picking Up The Pieces

Within days, the government will move 400,000 people made homeless by Haiti's epic earthquake from their squalid improvised camps throughout the shattered capital to new resettlement areas on the outskirts, a top Haitian official said Thursday.

Authorities are worried about sanitation and disease outbreaks in makeshift settlements like the one on the city's central Champs de Mars plaza, said Fritz Longchamp, chief of staff to President Rene Preval.

He said buses would start moving people within a week to 10 days, once new camps are ready. Brazilian U.N. peacekeepers were already leveling land in the suburb of Croix des Bouquets for a new tent city, the Geneva-based intergovernmental International Organization for Migration reported Thursday.

The hundreds of thousands whose homes were destroyed in the Jan. 12 quake had settled in more than 200 open spaces around the city, the lucky ones securing tents for their families, but most living under the tropical sun on blankets, on plastic sheets or under tarpaulins strung between tree limbs.

The announcement came as search-and-rescue teams packed their dogs and gear Thursday, with hopes almost gone of finding any more alive in the ruins. The focus shifted to keeping injured survivors alive, fending off epidemics and getting help to the hundreds of homeless still suffering. A melee erupted at one food distribution point as people broke into the storehouse and fought each other over the bags.

As aftershocks still shook the city, aid workers streamed into Haiti with water, food, drugs, latrines, clothing, trucks, construction equipment, telephones and tons of other supplies. The international Red Cross called it the greatest deployment of emergency responders in its 91-year history.

Help Is Coming....

But the built-in bottlenecks of this desperately poor, underdeveloped nation and the sheer scale of the catastrophe still left many of the hundreds of thousands of victims without help. The U.S. military reported a waiting list of 1,400 international relief flights seeking to land on Port-au-Prince's single runway, where 120 to 140 flights were arriving daily.

Four ships managed to dock at the capital's earthquake-damaged port, holding out the promise of a new avenue for getting aid to the city. But the going was slow since only one truck at a time could maneuver on the crack-riven pier. The picture was especially grim at emergency medical centers, where shortages of surgeons, nurses, their tools and supplies have backed up critical cases.

Food was reaching tens of thousands, but the need was much greater. Perhaps no one was more desperate than the 80 or so residents of the damaged Municipal Nursing Home, in a slum near the shell of Port-au-Prince's devastated cathedral. The quake killed six of the elderly, three others have since died of hunger and exhaustion, and several more were barely clinging to life.

In the first eight days after the quake, they had eaten just a bit of pasta cooked in gutter water and a bowl of rice each. On Thursday, they had a small bowl of spaghetti and five bags of rice and beans, and cooking oil, were delivered.

Meanwhile, one by one, deaths due to starvation have been adding to a Haitian government-estimated toll of 200,000 dead, as reported by the European Commission. It said 250,000 people were injured and 2 million homeless in the nation of 9 million.

As U.S. troops began patrolling Port-au-Prince to boost security, sporadic looting and violence continued.

At least 124 people were saved by search-and-rescue teams since the quake, the European Commission reported. As hopes faded, some of the 1,700 specialists, working in four dozen teams with 160 dogs, began demobilizing.

Joe Downey, a fire battalion chief from an 80-member New York City police and firefighter unit, said this was the worst destruction his rescue team had ever seen.

"Katrina was bad," he said of the 2005 hurricane. "But this was a magnitude at least 100 times worse."

Overwhelming Support Overwhelmed

On Thursday, 18 hospitals and emergency field hospitals were working in Port-au-Prince, but the burden was overwhelming. Doctors said patients were dying of sepsis from untreated wounds and they warned of potential outbreaks of diarrhea, respiratory-tract infections and other communicable diseases in the camps. A team of epidemiologists was on its way to assess that situation, the Pan American Health Organization said.

Offshore, the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort was reinforcing its crew to 800 doctors, nurses and medical technicians, increasing its hospital beds to almost 1,000, and boosting its operating rooms from six to 11 in the next few days, the Navy said.

Almost $1 billion in foreign aid has been pledged to help Haiti recover from the quake, and the White House said the U.S. share has climbed to about $170 million. The U.N. World Food Program said it has delivered at least 1 million rations to about 200,000 people, with each ration providing the equivalent of a daily three meals. In the coming days, it plans to deliver five-day rations to 100,000 people a day, it said. The U.S. military said it was resuming air drops of water and meals into zones secured by U.S. troops.

More than 2,600 U.S. soldiers, Marines and airmen were on the ground, and more than 10,000 sailors and others were offshore. The U.N. was adding 2,000 peacekeepers to the 7,000 already in Haiti, and 1,500 more police to the 2,100-member international force.

AP writers contributing to this story include: Alfred de Montesquiou, Mike Melia, Jonathan M. Katz and Kevin Maurer in Port-au-Prince; Fox writers - Charles J. Hanley and Martha Mendoza in Mexico City; Bradley S. Klapper in Geneva; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, and Pauline Jelinek in Washington.

Experts: Haiti At Risk For More Big Aftershocks

Haiti can expect more aftershocks in coming weeks, and while the usual pattern suggests they will become weaker and less frequent, another one as strong as yesterday and today's jolt (both 5.9) is certainly possible, scientists say.

The battered nation has felt more than 40 significant aftershocks since the Jan. 12 quake, with today's temblor the strongest.

These events are a sign the land is adjusting to "the new reality of the rock layers," said Bruce Pressgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Eric Calais of Purdue University, who has studied earthquake potential in the region, said aftershocks could continue for several weeks and that another jolt as strong as today's would not be surprising.

"They will be less and less frequent, but large ones can still strike," he said. So buildings are still at risk, especially those already weakened, he said.

Julie Dutton, a USGS geophysicist, agreed that more aftershocks are probable and that another event like Wednesday's was certainly possible. "More likely we see that the earthquakes decrease in size, but you definitely have the potential that you can have a larger earthquake," she said.

Paul Mann of the University of Texas said it's hard to predict whether another sizable quake is in the future, since "we are dealing with a natural system that is very complex."

Calais also said the fault zone responsible for last week's quake extends into the neighboring nation, the Dominican Republic. It's "somewhat of a concern to us" that that the Haiti quake may have raised the chances for a quake there. The two countries share the island of Hispaniola.

But scientists don't know enough to make any forecasts, he said. "There is so much uncertainty," Calais said. "At this point we're working really hard to understand last week's earthquake, and from there we can perhaps understand what might happen next."

Mann said Haiti's disaster should not raise the risk of earthquakes throughout the wider Caribbean region. The area is seismically active anyway, he said, and people who feel a temblor shouldn't assume it's a reaction to last week's Haiti quake.

For people living well away from Haiti, such as in Trinidad, Venezuela, Colombia or Central America, "I don't think they should be fearful that the Haiti earthquake is going to activate a fault in their own back yard," Mann said.

AP editor Lori Hinnant in New York contributed to this report.

Haiti: Chaos Hampers Aid Effort Amid Soaring Death Toll

From Fox News

Relief workers say pockets of violence in Haiti's devastated capital are hindering a slow increase in much-needed aid delivery, and some residents have banded together to protect the few possessions they have left.

As thousands of others head to the countryside, people in one hillside Port-au-Prince district blocked off access to their street with cars and asked local young men to patrol for looters.

"We never count on the government here," said Tatony Vieux, 29. "Never."

A week after the magnitude-7.0 quake struck, Tuesday dawned with new potential for reinforcements to aid in security and disaster relief. The United Nations Security Council was expected to approve additional peacekeeping forces. Some 2,000 U.S. Marines who arrived in the region a day earlier were parked offshore on ships.

But the scope of catastrophe had widened dramatically. The latest casualty report, from the European Commission citing Haitian government figures, doubled previous estimates of the dead to approximately 200,000, with some 70,000 bodies recovered and trucked off to mass graves.

The port remains blocked. Distribution of food, water and supplies from the city's lone airport to the needy are increasing but still remained a work in progress, frustrating many survivors who sleep in the streets and outdoor camps of tens of thousands. European Commission analysts estimate 250,000 were injured and 1.5 million were made homeless.

"I simply don't understand what is taking the foreigners so long," said Raymond Saintfort, a pharmacist who brought two suitcases of aspirin and antiseptics to the ruins of a nursing home where dozens of residents suffered.

The U.N. humanitarian chief, John Holmes, said not all 15 planned U.N. food distribution points were up and running yet. The U.N. World Food Program said it expected to boost operations to feeding 97,000 on Monday. But it needs 100 million prepared meals over the next 30 days, and it appealed for more government donations.

In one step to reassure frustrated aid groups, the U.S. military agreed to give aid deliveries priority over military flights at the now-U.S.-run airport here, according to the WFP. The Americans' handling of civilian flights had angered some humanitarian officials.

At the airport, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Chris Lounderman said about 100 flights a day were now landing.

Still, the U.S. military resorted to an air drop from C-17 transport planes Monday, parachuting pallets of supplies to a secured area outside the city rather than landing and unloading at the airport.

Meanwhile, rescuers continued finding survivors.

International rescue teams working together pulled two Haitian women from a collapsed university building, using machinery commonly nicknamed "jaws of life" to cut away debris and allow rescuers to pull them out on stretchers. A sister of one of the survivors shouted praises to God when the women emerged.

In the city's Bourdon area, a large team of French, Dominican and Panamanian rescuers using high-tech detection equipment said they heard heartbeats underneath the rubble of a bank building and worked into the night to try and rescue a survivor. The husband of a missing woman watched from a crowd of onlookers,

"I'm going to be here until I find my wife, I'll keep it up until I find her, dead or alive," said Witchar Longfosse.

Elsewhere, overwhelmed surgeons appealed for anesthetics, scalpels, and saws for cutting off crushed limbs. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, visiting one hospital, reported its staff had to use vodka to sterilize equipment. "It's astonishing what the Haitians have been able to accomplish," he said.

Front-line relief workers made some headway. By 7 a.m. Monday, an Israeli military field hospital had treated 196 people. "We understand it's a drop in a big sea," said facility spokesman Avi Berman.

Violence added to complications in places. Medical relief workers said they were treating gunshot wounds in addition to broken bones and other quake-related injuries. Nighttime was especially perilous and locals were forming night brigades and machete-armed mobs to fight bandits across the capital.

"It gets too dangerous," said Remi Rollin, an armed private security guard hired by a shopkeeper to ward off looters. "After sunset, police shoot on sight."

In the sprawling Cite Soleil slum, gangsters are reassuming control after escaping from the city's notorious main penitentiary and police urge citizens to take justice into their own hands.

"If you don't kill the criminals, they will all come back," a Haitian police officer shouted over a loudspeaker.

Alain Le Roy, the U.N. peacekeeping chief, cited the often unruly crowds at points where food and water is being distributed and said Haitian police had returned to the streets in only "limited numbers."

A Security Council vote was expected to add 1,500 more U.N. police and 2,000 more peacekeepers to join the 9,000 or so U.N. security personnel in Haiti.

Thousands are streaming out of Port-au-Prince, crowding aboard buses headed toward countryside villages. Charlemagne Ulrick planned to stay behind after putting his three children on a truck for an all-day journey to Haiti's northwestern peninsula.

"They have to go and save themselves," said Ulrick, a dentist. "I don't know when they're coming back."

U.S. and Haitian officials also warned any efforts of Haitians to reach the United States by boat would be thwarted. Haiti's ambassador in Washington, Raymond Joseph, recorded a message in Creole to his countrymen, urging them not to leave.

"If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that's not at all the case," Joseph said, according to a transcript on America.gov, a State Department Web site. "And they will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from."

Haiti and Natural Disasters

When it comes to natural disasters, Haiti seems to have a bull's-eye on it, and not because God has it in for people.

It's because of a killer combination of geography, poverty, social problems, slipshod building standards and bad luck, experts say. The list of catastrophes is mind-numbing: This week's devastating earthquake. Four tropical storms or hurricanes that killed about 800 people in 2008. Killer storms in 2005 and 2004. Floods in 2007, 2006, 2003 (twice) and 2002. And that's just the 21st Century run-down.

"If you want to put the worst case scenario together in the Western hemisphere (for disasters), it's Haiti," said Richard Olson, a professor at Florida International University who directs the Disaster Risk Reduction in the Americas project."There's a whole bunch of things working against Haiti. One is the hurricane track. The second is tectonics. Then you have the environmental degradation and the poverty," he said.

This is the 15th disaster since 2001 in which the U.S. Agency for International Development has sent money and help to Haiti. Some 3,000 people have been killed and millions of people displaced in the disasters that preceded this week's earthquake. Since the turn of this century the U.S. has sent more than $16 million in disaster aid to Haiti.

While the causes of individual disasters are natural, more than anything what makes Haiti a constant site of catastrophe is its heart-tugging social ills, disaster experts say. It starts with poverty, includes deforestation, unstable governments, poor building standards, low literacy rates and then comes back to poverty.

This week's devastating quake comes as Haiti is still trying to recover from 2008, when it was hit four times by tropical storms and hurricanes, said Kathleen Tierney, director of the University of Colorado's Natural Hazard Center.

And while there is bad luck involved, former top FEMA official Mark Merritt, president of the disaster consulting firm James Lee Witt Associates, says, "It's an economic issue. It's one of those things that feeds on each other."

Every factor that disaster experts look for in terms of vulnerability is the worst it can be for Haiti, said Dennis Mileti, a seismic safety commissioner for the state of California and author of the book "Disasters by Design." Add to that the high population density in the capital, many of them migrants from the countryside who live in shantytowns scattered throughout Port-au-Prince.

"It doesn't get any worse," said Mileti, a retired University of Colorado professor. "I fear this may go down in history as the largest disaster ever, or pretty close to it."

For this to be the deadliest quake on record, the death toll will have to top the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed more than 227,000 and a 1976 earthquake in China that killed 255,000, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"It's because they're so vulnerable,

any event tips the balance...

They don't have the kind of resiliency

that other nations have.

It doesn't take much to tip the balance."

- Susan Cutter, University of South Carolina's

Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute

While nobody knows the complete death toll in Haiti, a leading senator, Youri Latortue, told the Associated Press recently that as many as 500,000 could be dead. "Whether it comes in as No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3, only time will tell," Mileti said. "This is a major cataclysm."

Vulnerability to natural disasters is almost a direct function of poverty, said Debarati Guha Sapir, director of the World Health Organization's Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters.

"Impacts are not natural nor is there a divine hand or ill fate," Sapir said. "People will also die now of lack of follow-up medical care. In other words, those who survived the quake may not survive for long due to the lack of adequate medical care."

University of South Carolina's Susan Cutter, who maps out social vulnerability to disaster by county in the United States, said Haiti's poverty makes smaller disasters there worse.

"It's because they're so vulnerable, any event tips the balance," said Cutter, director of the school's Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute. "They don't have the kind of resiliency that other nations have. It doesn't take much to tip the balance."

A magnitude 7 earthquake is devastating wherever it hits, Cutter said. But it's even worse in a place like Haiti.

One problem is the poor quality of buildings, Merritt said. Haiti doesn't have building codes and even if it did, people who make on average $2 a day can't afford to build something that can withstand earthquakes and hurricanes, he said. Poverty often is a major reason for poor infrastructure, Tierney said.

Then there's the deforestation that leads to mudslides and flooding because Haiti leads the hemisphere in tree-clearing, Merritt and others said. That causes erosion which worsens flooding. The trees are cut down mostly for cooking because of the poverty, Merritt said.

Another problem is the inability to prepare for and cope with disaster, said Merritt, who last fall started work to help train Haitians to prepare for disasters, including creating emergency response teams in a country that only has a couple of fire stations. It involved Haiti's small disaster bureau, the United Nations, Red Cross and other relief agencies and governments. The training manuals were still being translated from English to Creole when the earthquake hit, he said.

"If you look at neighboring Cuba, they have a very good emergency management infrastructure," Tierney said. "That's partly because of the way they organize the country from the block upward."

Another issue is that Haiti has been hurricane focused because quakes have been so rare in its history.

Until about a decade ago, scientists thought the north coast of Hispaniola was more prone to earthquakes. But work by Tim Dixon of the University of Miami found the southern fault zone, where Tuesday's quake occurred, was equally likely to produce temblors.

Scientists have known about the seismic threat for a while now, but Dixon said that doesn't help the Haitian government, which lacks the resources to quake-proof buildings and structures.

"This was not that huge of an earthquake, but there's been a lot of damage," he said. "It's the tragedy of a natural disaster superimposed on a poor country."

Haiti shares the island with the relatively richer Dominican Republic, which provides a good contrast when it comes to catastrophes, experts said.

Buildings in the Dominican Republic are stronger and withstand disaster better, Merritt said. Partly that's because it is a richer country with a more stable government.

The damage to Haiti is so devastating, so extensive that it offers a sense of hope in rebuilding, the experts said. Past disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, show that it is easier to put up new buildings than rebuild damaged ones, which is one reason why the wiped-clear Mississippi coast came back faster than New Orleans, Merritt said.

After the killer 1976 earthquake in Guatemala, houses were rebuilt with less vulnerable, lighter roofs and the entire region was designed to be less disaster prone, FIU's Olson said.

"Catastrophic disasters open a window of opportunity to fundamentally change how cities are rebuilt," Olson said. "If it's rebuilt in the same fashion (as it is now), our children are going to have this same conversation."

Associated Press Writer Alicia Chang contributed to this report.

BREAKING - Rescuers Scramble To Get Aid To Quake Survivors

Desperately needed aid from around the world slowly made its way today into Haiti, where supply bottlenecks and a leadership vacuum left rescuers scrambling on their own to save the trapped and injured and get relief supplies into the capital.

The international Red Cross estimated that 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in Tuesday's magnitude-7.0 earthquake.

President Barack Obama announced that "one of the largest relief efforts in our recent history" is moving toward Haiti, with thousands of troops and a broad array of civilian rescue workers flying or sailing in to aid the stricken country -- backed by more than $100 million in relief funds

"This is much worse than a hurricane..

There's no water. There's nothing.

Thirsty people are going to die."

- Doctor's Assistant Jimitre Coquillon

The nascent flow of rescue workers showed some results: A newly arrived search team pulled a U.N. security worker alive from the organization's collapsed headquarters, where about 100 people are still trapped. He stood, held up a fist in celebration, and was helped to a hospital. Planes from China, France, Spain and the United States landed at Port-au-Prince's airport, carrying searchers and tons of water, food, medicine and other supplies -- with more promised the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. The international Red Cross estimated 3 million people -- a third of the population -- may need emergency relief.

The Federal Aviation Administration halted all civilian flights from the United States to Port-au-Prince at the request of the Haitian government because there is no room on the ground for more planes and not enough jet fuel for planes to go back, an official at the FAA said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly. It took six hours to unload a Chinese plane due to a lack of equipment -- a hint of possible bottlenecks ahead as a global response brings a stream of aid flights to the quake-damaged airport.

"We don't have enough handling equipment or the people to run it," said U.S. Air Force Col. Ben McMullin, part of the team handling traffic at the airport. "We're trying to control the flow of aircraft."

In Geneva, Red Cross spokesman Jean-Luc Martinage said the Haitian Red Cross estimated 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed, based on reports from its network of volunteers across Port-au-Prince.

There seemed to be little official Haitian presence in much of the capital -- or at the airport. McMullin said about 60 planes carrying 2,000 people had landed since Wednesday, when the airport reopened, and noon Thursday. U.S. military forklift operators helped unload some foreign flights as well as U.S. cargos and Haitian staff were far outnumbered by foreign aid workers and military, and no senior Haitian officials were visible.

In the city, trucks carrying police and U.N. workers or equipment to clear away debris were often stuck in traffic on roads filled with pickup trucks, cars and pedestrians. At many collapsed buildings, neighbors and volunteers dug through rubble -- often with bare hands -- to free trapped residents without help from the government.

Since the earthquake, President Rene Preval has maintained his typical low profile, granting only a couple of media interviews and making few public appearances. His own residences were damaged in the quake and the Parliament building collapsed, along with some other ministries and departments.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. had been in touch with Preval, and added: "We're not taking over Haiti. We are helping to stabilize Haiti, we're helping to provide them lifesaving support."

The often-chaotic city was surprisingly calm, despite the devastation, though journalists occasionally heard the sound of isolated gunfire. It was not clear if it was aimed at people. Even in normal times, guards sometimes fire shotguns in the air to keep people away from stores. There has been widespread looting of collapsed buildings since the earthquake hit, but rarely of undamaged shops, said Matt Marek, Haiti country representative of the American Red Cross.

"There is no other way to get provisions," he told The Associated Press. "Even if you have money, those resources are going to be exhausted in a few days."

Bodies lay in the street, often covered by a white cloth, in the tropical heat. Some people dragged the dust-covered dead along the roads, trying to reach a hospital where they might leave them. Others tried to carry dead relatives to nearby hills for impromptu burials, prompting Brazil's military -- the biggest continent among U.N. peacekeepers -- to warn the practice could lead to an epidemic. It said it asked authorities to create a new cemetery. The Brazilian military said it also was worried that bodies could be left too long because many Voodoo followers in Haiti do not allow the dead to be touched before all their rituals are concluded.

"This is much worse than a hurricane," said Jimitre Coquillon, a doctor's assistant working at a triage center set up in a hotel parking lot. "There's no water. There's nothing. Thirsty people are going to die."

Aid workers reported confusion over how to cope with the sudden flood of aid from scores of places.

"We don't have enough handling

equipment or the people to run it...

We're trying to control the flow of aircraft."

- U.S. Air Force Col. Ben McMullin

"Donations are coming in to the airport here, but some are coming without notice from very well-meaning groups," said Save the Children spokeswoman Kate Conradt. "There is not yet a system to get it in" to those who need it.

Search and rescue squads from Virginia and Iceland arrived Wednesday and some groups -- from Cuba's government and Doctors Without Borders -- used physicians already in the country to treat victims immediately after the quake.

The U.S. Army said a detachment of more than 100 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division was heading out from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, looking for locations to set up tents and other essentials in preparation for the arrival of another 800 personnel Friday. That's in addition to some 2,200 Marines to be sent, as the military prepares to help with security, search and rescue missions, and the delivery of humanitarian supplies. More than a half-dozen U.S. military ships also are expected to help, with the largest, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, arriving later today.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that 91 injured French nationals were evacuated to the Caribbean island of Martinique. The acrid smell of drywall and dust that filled the air immediately after the quake has faded, giving way to the usual aromas of Port-au-Prince: flowers and mango trees, with a hint of gasoline and urine. Police officers carried the injured in their pickup trucks. Wisnel Occilus, a 24-year-old student, was wedged between two other survivors in a truck bed headed to a police station. He was in an English class when the quake struck and the building collapsed.

"The professor is dead. Some of the students are dead, too," said Occilus, who suspected he had several broken bones. "Everything hurts." Other survivors carried injured to hospitals in wheelbarrows and on stretchers fashioned from doors.

About 3,000 police and international peacekeepers cleared debris, directed traffic and maintained security in the capital. But law enforcement was stretched thin even before the quake and would be ill-equipped to deal with major unrest. The U.N.'s 9,000-member peacekeeping force sent patrols across the capital's streets while securing the airport, port and main buildings.

The State Department announced one American had died in Haiti, saying that at least 164 U.S. citizens have been evacuated since the quake. Coast Guard C-130 planes have airlifted 42 American officials and their families and another 72 private citizens to safety, Crowley said. Another 370 Americans were awaiting flights out, he said. There were about 45,000 Americans living in Haiti at the time of the earthquake.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it set up a Web site to help Haitians find missing loved ones. Robert Zimmerman, deputy head of the group's tracing unit, said people in Haiti and abroad can register missing relatives on the site.

According to the USGS, the January 12, 2010, Haiti earthquake occurred in the boundary region separating the Caribbean plate and the North America plate. This plate boundary is dominated by left-lateral strike slip motion and compression, and accommodates about 20 mm/y (20 millimeter per year) slip, with the Caribbean plate moving eastward with respect to the North America plate.

Haiti occupies the western part of the island of Hispaniola, one of the Greater Antilles islands, situated between Puerto Rico and Cuba. At the longitude of the January 12 earthquake, motion between the Caribbean and North American plates is partitioned between two major east-west trending, strike-slip fault systems -- the Septentrional fault system in northern Haiti and the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault system in southern Haiti.

The location and focal mechanism of the earthquake are consistent with the event having occurred as left-lateral strike slip faulting on the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault system. This fault system accommodates about 7 mm/y, nearly half the overall motion between the Caribbean plate and North America plate.

Associated Press contributors to this story: Jonathan Katz and Jennifer Kay in Port-au-Prince; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Frank Jordans and Bradley S. Klapper in Geneva; Jenny Barchfield in Paris; Pauline Jelinek in Washington; Tales Azzoni in Sao Paulo.

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