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Port-Au-Prince (AFP) April 10, 2010 Police moved to evict thousands of homeless quake victims Saturday from squalid encampments in Haiti's capital, even from the pitch of the country's national stadium. Beginning late Friday, contingents of the Haitian National Police began breaking down tents and other shelters in the Sylvio Cator stadium, almost three months after the January 12 quake killed more than 220,000 people and left 1.3 million homeless. Evacuations of tent cities across Port-au-Prince were meanwhile being ramped up Saturday, including the first few hundred from the overcrowded camp at the Petionville golf club, which is prone to mudslides and flooding, to a new location 20 kilometers (12 miles) away. About 7,335 people, including some 1,300 families, have sought shelter on national stadium's artificial turf since it was opened up to victims after the disaster, according to authorities -- but their welcome has come to an end. "We could no longer tolerate people living here. They did everything (in the stadium): prostitution, rape and theft," said stadium director Rolny St. Louis. Officials handed out tents to occupants ahead of the eviction, in preparation for returning the stadium to sports use. "We need to revive football. There are players waiting to play again, and feed their families from their job," said St. Louis, who was heckled by the exiting crowd who accuse him leaving people live on the streets. As for the golf club, officials have said it plans to move some 8,000 Haitians from the makeshift camp ahead of the rainy season. UN officials said this week more than a million Haitians, about 90 percent of those made homeless in January's devastating earthquake, had received tents or other means of shelter. At that current pace, all Haitians who lost their homes in quake will have some form of shelter by May 1, said officials from the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Authorities have been racing to get shelter for Haitians still without homes ahead of the start of the rainy season. Hundreds of Haitians have died in past years in their flood-prone country, swept away by landslides or drowned in flooding. Flooding in Haiti is exacerbated by widespread deforestation as people cut down trees and bushes to build cooking fires.
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Haiti's new burns unit kept busy as fire hazards risePort-Au-Prince (AFP) April 7, 2010 Electrocuted by live wires or burned in fires, growing numbers of Haitians have been seeking treatment at a new field hospital here after accidents on the streets or in the camps. Faced with an increasing demand for burns treatment, Medecins Sans Frontiers set up the unit after the January 12 earthquake in a special wing of its hospital in Delmas. And the service, the only one in the cou ... read more |
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