Haiti earthquake: Emergency aid begins arriving in Port-au-Prince

Reporting from Mexico City -- Promised emergency aid from abroad began flowing into Haiti's earthquake-ravaged capital today as residents awoke for a second morning to a battered landscape of toppled buildings and legions of dead and injured, with many people still unaccounted for in the debris.

An Air China flight landed in Port-au-Prince before daybreak, ferrying a Chinese search-and-rescue team, medical personnel and tons of food and medicine, the Associated Press reported.

Three French planes brought in supplies and a mobile hospital, the news agency reported, and British relief workers arrived next door in the Dominican Republic, an important relay point for the wave of assistance that the world has pledged.

The U.S. aircraft carrier Vinson was en route to Haiti and was expected to arrive today with helicopters to help shuttle relief supplies. The Navy has also dispatched the amphibious assault ship Bataan, with 2,000 members of a Marine expeditionary force aboard and medical facilities that will allow it to serve as a floating hospital. The Navy has also ordered two other amphibious vessels to set sail.

By some estimates, 3 million people were affected by the earthquake, roughly a third of the population of the impoverished Caribbean nation.

-- Ken Ellingwood

Photo gallery: Earthquake hits Haiti | Twitter: Reports from Haiti | Resources: How to help

Top photo: Chinese rescue workers prepare their equipment after arriving at the international airport in Port-au-Prince. Credit: Lynne Sladky / Associated Press

Comments

[pasadena jag]

The USA has done nothing in the past but ruin this country. First, we propped up Papa Doc as its "Hitler" like leader, then we feed the elite ruling classes in Haiti with lots of pay-offs, then Clinton stuck his hand in the whole mess with more money into the pockets of a few, then Bush came in with his right-wing suppression policies and now Obama is right behind him. Haiti has not only been a victim of an earthquake from the Christian God but a major victim of economic imperialism as orchestrated by those in Washington!