Amid fears of unrest, looters roam the streets of Port-au-Prince
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The U.S. military distributed its first aid midday yesterday , as the worldwide effort to help quake-ravaged Haiti struggled to reach the capital city’s residents.

Scavengers look for goods amid the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince yesterday.

A rapid response unit from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division handed out food, water and medical supplies to Haitians outside the main airport in Port-au-Prince.

“We’re here to do as much good and as little evil as we can,” said Capt. Mike Anderson, the unit’s commander.

Aid has been slow to reach stricken residents due to blocked roads, a damaged seaport and clogged airport.

Amid fears of unrest among the Haitian people in their fourth day of desperation, looters roamed downtown streets, young men and boys with machetes.

“They are scavenging everything. What can you do?” said Michel Legros, 53, as he waited for help to search for seven relatives buried in his collapsed house.

Hard-pressed government workers, meanwhile, were burying thousands of bodies in mass graves. The Red Cross estimates 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in Tuesday’s cataclysmic earthquake. The State Department updated the toll of U.S. dead to six and cautioned that the casualty count is likely to rise still further.

President Barack Obama announced that he will meet at the White House Saturday with former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who have been chosen to lead the private fundraising efforts to help Haiti.

United Nations peacekeepers patrolling the capital said anger was rising. They warned aid convoys to add security to guard against looting.

Ordinary Haitians sensed the potential for an explosion of lawlessness. “We’re worried that people will get a little uneasy,” said attendant Jean Reynol, 37, explaining his gas station was ready to close immediately if violence breaks out.

“People who have not been eating or drinking for almost 50 hours and are already in a very poor situation,” U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva. “If they see a truck with something, or if they see a supermarket which has collapsed, they just rush to get something to eat.”

The quake’s destruction of Port-au-Prince’s main prison complicated the security situation. International Red Cross spokesman Marcal Izard said some 4,000 prisoners had escaped and were freely roaming the streets.
“They obviously took advantage of this disaster,” Izard said.

‘No one is helping us’
Huge logistical hurdles and the sheer scale of the destruction mean aid is still not reaching hundreds of thousands of hurt and homeless people in the devastated coastal capital Port-au-Prince.

“These people have lost everything, They have nothing. They have been waiting for two days now. No one is helping us. Please bring us water or people will die soon,” said Renelde Lamarque, who has opened his home yard to about 500 quake victims in the devastated Fort National neighborhood.

Raggedly dressed survivors held out their arms to a Reuters reporter, begging for food and water.

Dangerous aftershocks still ripple every few hours through the city, dislodging debris and increasing the anguish of people already traumatized by death and injury on a massive scale.

A big aftershock jolted buildings at about 5 a.m EST on Friday, causing fresh alarm.

Limited looting
The U.N. World Food Program said post-quake looting of its food supplies long stored in Port-au-Prince appears to have been limited, contrary to an earlier report Friday. It said it would start handing out 6,000 tons of food aid recovered from a damaged warehouse in the city’s Cite Soleil slum.

A spokeswoman for the Rome-based agency, Emilia Casella, said the WFP was preparing shipments of enough ready-to-eat meals to feed 2 million Haitians for a month. She noted that regular food stores in the city had been emptied by looters.

More than 300 troops of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division arrived at the Port au Prince airport overnight and others have arrived in nearby waters on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, deputy commander of the U.S. Southern Command, told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“We have much more support on the way. Our priority is getting relief out to the needy people,” he said.

About 5,500 U.S. soldiers and Marines are expected to be in Haiti by Monday. Their efforts will include providing security, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Hundreds of bodies were stacked outside the city morgue, and limbs of the dead protruded from the rubble of crushed schools and homes. A few wor
kers were able to free people who had been trapped under the rubble for days, including a New Jersey woman, Sarla Chand, 65, of Teaneck, freed by French firefighters Thursday from the collapsed Montana Hotel. But others attended to the grim task of using bulldozers to transport loads of bodies.