Rubble in the streets, closed airports, power outages, phone-service disruptions, and collapsed hospitals have hamstrung efforts to get supplies and rescue workers into the devastated regions of Haiti. Red Cross teams had to rally in next-door Dominican Republic before entering the chaos of Haiti this morning, and so far only charter flights and an Air China rescue jet have been able to land in the Port-au-Prince airport. “We were on the plane here with a couple of different agencies, and they all are having similar challenges of access,” Colin Chaperon, a field director for the American Red Cross, told the Times. Still, the World Food Program is flying in 100 tons of ready-to-eat meals and biscuits, the United Nations (which is missing 140 of its employees in Haiti) will provide $10 million in relief cash, and Doctors Without Borders is setting up makeshift clinics to replace destroyed hospitals. All the while, though, the death toll remains unknown. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton estimated that it would reach the “tens of thousands.”
Amid Untold Dead, Haiti’s Devastation Hobbles Efforts to Reach Survivors [NYT]
Related: The White House guide to how you can help Haiti
